


Once Bitten, Twice Shy

by LadyBoBo



Series: Louder Than Words [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alcohol Problems that Aren't Alcoholism but Also Aren't Healthy, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Happy Endings for All Gays Forever, Horny Middle-Aged Men, M/M, Miscommunication, Or Total Lack of Communication, Refer to chapter notes for more specific warnings, Relationship Problems, references to past homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:33:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 46,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22126417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBoBo/pseuds/LadyBoBo
Summary: Richie Tozier is thirty-six years old, and he’s on top of the fucking world. For a guy who makes a living dishing out laughs, this whole “path to happiness” thing is a relatively new one.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: Louder Than Words [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1541443
Comments: 114
Kudos: 448





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This really got away from me, and it's already way longer than intended. Most of it is finished, but the end is coming slow for me, and I just wanted to get some of it out there! So! I've split it into three parts. I hope you enjoy this rocky, rocky ride.
> 
> If you're new to the series, some bits are probably gonna be super confusing unless you read part one first!

Richie Tozier is thirty-six years old, and he’s on top of the fucking world.

For a guy who makes a living dishing out laughs, this whole “ _path to happiness_ ” thing is a relatively new one. He grew up in a small podunk town that was never meant to churn out a kid like Trashmouth Tozier, and he was raised by parents that loved him endlessly but never really _got_ him. Even as a kid he never really understood restraint — he’s always kind of lived his life feeling everything all at once, and letting it come out loud and brash and honest.

It’d gotten him in trouble in the past, sure. Mostly it had gotten him punched in the face. Or held underwater in the quarry until the very last minute, when he had thought his lungs would explode. And when people saw the exposed parts of him they _really_ didn’t like, they had sneered and teased and laughed and laughed and laughed.

But the laugher, Richie found, was sort of like his magic power.

He could absorb it, turn it around like some kind of armor. People would laugh at him, but if he worked hard enough they could also laugh _with_ him. If he insults himself first, no one can ever hurt him. Richie Tozier might be a soft pussy ass bitch, but Trashmouth Tozier is invincible.

He had thought so, anyway, but spending your whole life deflecting really manifests itself in unhealthy ways. Like a lot of bad sex, too much good booze, a shit ton of mediocre weed, and only a few instances of cocaine that Richie really couldn’t tell you the quality of. And the world might have still been laughing, but it wasn’t _with_ him anymore, because he hadn’t found his own jokes funny in years.

Stan had saved his life, really. Probably literally. He had grabbed Richie’s face between his hands one night, his expression so serious and stern, and begged him to get his shit together.

“ _Something’s got to give, Rich,_ ” he’d said. “ _I love you, and I’ll do anything to help you, but you’ve got to stop pretending like you don’t have limits. I’ve seen guys spiral like this, and all it takes is one bad night to lose your chance to turn it around._ ”

He’d been thirty-one then, fully clothed in the bathtub and covered in his own vomit as cold water doused him from the shower head. He’d known Stan for roughly a decade at that point — had holed up with him in their first shitty apartment in Queens. Had flirted with him endlessly and shamelessly because he was the only safe place that Richie was confident in. Had treated him like a lifeline every time he got to the end of his rapidly fraying rope.

So he’d listened, because he owed it to Stan, and Stan had made him feel like he owed it to himself a little bit, too. He’d gotten a therapist. Kicked his way out of the closet. Started writing his own material again. Lost his audience, but built a bigger and better one. Moved in next door in Stan’s fancy apartment building. Met Mike, then Bev and Ben, then Bill.

Richie feels like his little found family happened so fast, but it fell together so gradually. Took years, and while he loved them with all that he had — relied on them and would have gone to fucking war for them — there was still something a little empty in him.

His friends were patient, and smart, and funny, but they always met his antics with fond smiles and little shrugs. Occasional _beep beeps_. Stan engaged with him the most, with devastating rolls of his eyes and the occasional threat upon his life and genitalia. But no one ever tried to take him on head to head. No one ever tried to keep up.

They all loved him, but no one was _in_ love with him.

And then he met Eddie.

Hand to fucking God, Richie is pretty sure he fell in love with Eddie in the course of their very first conversation. Like, he’s not an expert, but he’s at least eighty percent sure that was big time love at first sight.

Richie had always been a force of chaos, but Eddie… When Richie got loud, Eddie got louder. When Richie started talking faster than his brain could work, Eddie was already running circles around him. For every push that Richie dealt, Eddie was right there pulling.

They were like Godzilla and King Kong. Bad ass. Or, well, evenly matched is what he was going for.

Sighing, Richie puts a pin in his ruminating to turn over on his side. Eddie is next to him, buried under the covers, eyes shut but clearly awake since his breathing isn’t snuffly and adorable yet.

He pokes him in the forehead. “Hey. Eds.”

Eddie squints an eye open. “What?”

“If you and I were Godzilla and King Kong, who would be who?”

“You stupid mother fucker,” Eddie gripes, “This is what you bothered me for?” He scoots closer and nuzzles his face into Richie’s chest, eyes slipping back shut. “I’m obviously Godzilla, because he’s better. And look at your arms, you’re a full on hairy ape.”

An uncontrollable grin takes over Richie’s face. “You’re so right. I love you.”

“Love you more,” Eddie mumbles, barely conscious.

So yeah, Richie’s life is pretty fucking perfect.

—————————————————

“You are _huge_ ,” Richie pants, sweating with his arms full.

Beverly cuts him with a glare, holding the door open for him so he can lug in the oversized package her aunt shipped her. “I’m eight months pregnant. There is literally a human life growing inside of me."

“A gigantic human life,” he grunts, thunking the box down in the middle of the living room. “How is she not gonna split you in two on the way out? You know what, never mind. It’s probably best if neither of us think about the state your vagina is gonna be in.”

“Beep beep, Richie.” But Bev is laughing, so he knows he hasn’t _actually_ overstepped.

Richie rolls his shoulders and pads over to Bev. He bends at the waist, dropping a comically loud kiss on the top of her stomach. “You’re going to name her after me, right?”

“Of course not,” she says, cheeks rosy and voice full of soft affection. “You’re enough Richie for one building.”

He preens a bit at that, stretching his palms over Bev’s stomach to see if he can feel the baby kick. He swears the little fetus likes it when he does some of his voices, but Eddie tells him he’s delusional. Or maybe it’s demented. Honestly, it’s probably both.

“Fine. She has to call me Uncle Richie, though. Not just while she’s cute and stupid enough to believe we’re related. I’m talking like, she’s thirty and shouting out old Uncle Richie while he’s giving a toast at her wedding.”

Bev’s eyes fill with tears at the slightest provocation these days, and this conversation is apparently no exception. “Oh Richie… Yes.” She sniffs, pulling him into an awkward, hunching hug. “I’d really like that.”

“I bet,” he mutters, feeling a rush of similar affection. “You’re just excited about all the free babysitting you’re gonna wring out of us.”

She barks a laugh, tears gone so suddenly like they were clouds drifting by on a windy day. “You’re not wrong. And you’ll have to fight Stan and Bill for date night privileges. I think they booked her first three years solid.”

“No problem. Eddie and I can take them. Well, I can watch Eddie take them. That little fucker is deceptively strong, he doesn’t need any of my help.”

Bev opens her mouth to say something, but clearly thinks better of it, teeth clacking shut. Richie is very familiar with those motions, and knows the twist of her lips means she’s just dying to say it anyway. With Richie, it barely takes any prompting. Bev might be a tougher nut to crack, but Richie is nothing if not persistent.

“What?”

She doesn’t even bother to feign ignorance. “No. It’s nothing. Just a silly passing thought.”

“I love silly,” he wheedles. “Silly is my everything. Tell me.”

“Forget it,” she insists, shaking her head. She waddles over to the box Richie brought in, starting to open the flaps like Ben isn’t the one who’s going to come in and put this crib together in point eight seconds.

“I can’t forget it. It’s my curse. Mind like a steel trap.”

Bev sighs, rubbing at the headache building at her temples. “Richie.”

“Beverly,” he echoes in the same tone. “Since when do we have boundaries?”

“Fine!” She throws her hands up and looks like forcing the words past her lips is as painful as waltzing across hot coals. “Does Eddie seem… Odd?”

Richie snorts, brain going soft and fuzzy at the thought of all of Eddie’s very particular oddities. “That’s selling him short.”

“No, I mean…” She huffs a short breath through her teeth. “About baby stuff. He’s just a little… Dodgy. I don’t know. Maybe it’s all in my head.”

He narrows his eyes, metaphorical hackles rising. Richie is a roll-with-the-punches kind of guy ninety-nine percent of the time, but if there’s a whisper of trouble regarding Eddie he turns into a rabid possum. “Dodgy? What? You’re saying my boyfriend hates your unborn baby or something?”

“You’re so dramatic,” Bev groans. “God, the two of you are made for each other.”

“Don’t distract me by telling me exactly what I want to hear,” he chides, wagging a finger at her like an eighty year old woman. “You think Eddie is a baby hater?”

She wraps her hand around his finger, tugging it down by their hips so she can catch the attention of his gaze. “No, Richie. I don’t. Of course not. I think Eddie is going to love my daughter just as much as you will — just as much as anyone. I just think the idea of having a baby around makes him nervous.”

Childishly, he bites back, “Well, that’s stupid.”

“Okay,” she shrugs, unwilling to engage him on the matter. Smart woman.

It _is_ stupid, though. Eddie spends every waking second taking care of people — making sure they sleep enough, eat right, wash their hands after poking at a mysterious glob in the park. That’s what taking care of a baby is! He doesn’t even have to change his mind set. It’s like he’s a natural born babysitter.

And really, Richie can’t imagine what else, if not that, might make a grown man nervous to be around a baby.

—————————————————

Richie is sleeping on the couch two days later when Eddie barges into his apartment. He has a key, even though he never has to use it, because Richie never locks his door. They’ve gotten into a lot of arguments about that — soft squabbles, really — because Eddie worries about his safety, and Richie just worries about all the times he forgets his keys in yesterday’s pants.

Regardless.

Eddie is in his apartment, juggling an armful of paper grocery bags, and Richie is soft and sleepy, always happy to have him be the first thing his opening eyes latch on to.

“Wha’s goin’ on?” Richie mumbles, stretching and twisting on the couch. Reveling as Eddie pauses in what he’s doing to watch.

Blinking away the momentary fog of arousal, Eddie pops back into motion. “There was a sale. I was at the grocery store, and I was thinking, it’s Fall. Fall is good for apples. So I went to the produce, and while I was getting the apples I saw that the bulk oranges were on sale. Huge bags of them! So I bought six.”

Richie can’t help the snort the stutters out of his nose. “Six? Are you on snack duty for a children’s soccer game or something?”

“No,” Eddie says, mouth twisting downward. “It was just a good deal. And I’ve never seen you eat a single orange. You’re a disaster. I don’t want you to get scurvy.”

“Please tell me that is not a real and genuine concern that you have.”

“Well, it wasn’t until I saw the oranges!” Eddie piles up the ridiculous haul of fruit on Richie’s counter. “Then all I could think about was what would happen if I didn’t buy them. What if I could have prevented your scurvy? What kind of boyfriend would I be if it was as easy as buying six bags of oranges, but I just let you suffer instead?” He takes a deep breath. “I bought you bananas, too.”

Richie smiles lazily, tracking Eddie’s movements as he stalks over to the couch. “Bananas don’t help with scurvy.”

“No.” Eddie places a palm on Richie’s chest and presses him back down flat against the cushions. He swings a leg over, situating in Richie’s lap and dipping in to brush their lips. “But they’re not going to make your scurvy worse.”

Richie smiles into a kiss, sliding his hands up Eddie’s neck to rest on his jaw. “So just to be clear, in this scenario I now already have scurvy?"

“Probably,” Eddie agrees, melting against him. His kisses get a little looser, messy as he draws Richie’s bottom lip between his teeth. “You’re probably full of diseases. Typhoid. Scabies. Giardiasis.”

This conversation should be a total buzzkill, but the full force of Eddie’s attention has Richie’s blood simmering. His hands — surprisingly rough and slightly too cold — are pushing up Richie’s radioactive green alien t-shirt, making the softest part of his stomach twitch and jerk. His voice is teasing — quiet, low, and dark. And his eyes, tender and somehow challenging at the same time. Every detail constructed to inch up the heat crawling up Richie’s skin.

“Are you just spending your free time googling awful diseases?” Richie asks, a fraction too breathless for how mild things are. “What the fuck is giardiasis?”

A tiny, smug smile quirks at Eddie’s lips as he circles a nipple with the tip of his finger and Richie shudders. “It’s poop stuff.” Then, with a manic amount of glee, “They call it beaver fever. I would’ve thought you were too gay to get that.”

Richie swoons. He tugs Eddie down by the collar of his shirt, kissing him deep and filthy, his tongue mapping out the topography of the inside of his mouth. “I love you.” He drops his hands to either side of Eddie’s ass, cupping like he’s cradling a precious object. “You’re everything.”

Eddie laughs, head tipping back to elongate his handsome neck which is tragically free of bite marks. When he comes back down to earth, his face is so soft that Richie is certain his own heart has stopped beating. “You make me dumber, you know.”

And Richie, he likes to consider himself an expert on all things Eddie Kaspbrak. He’s the world’s leading translator of Repressed Little Gremlin. He knows that when he says, “ _You make me dumber_ ,” what he’s really saying is, “ _I never have more fun than when I’m having it with you_.”

He shifts them, rolling onto their sides so Eddie is squished tight between Richie’s body and the back of the couch. Their foreheads are pressed together, and the thing that was building between them just moments before eases from something hot into something warm. “Thank you for taking care of me. But you don’t have to worry like that. I don’t want to be one more thing that drives you crazy.”

Eddie smiles, clutching Richie closer with his arms and legs like an octopus. “You wouldn’t be able to stop driving me crazy if you tried. But I don’t mind worrying. It’s not a chore when it’s you. It feels… It feels like the only normal thing I’ve ever done.”

“I worry, too,” Richie admits. “About different stuff. But I think that’s just how it is when you, you know, love someone like this.”

A dreamy sigh heaves out of Eddie’s chest. “So you don’t regret going all in with the neurotic basket case who lives down the hall?”

“Fuck no. I was loving it when I was all in you last night — balls deep in your basket case.”

“Richie,” he warns through a laugh, trying to crawl out of the trench of the couch, but it’s too late. Richie has already flipped them again, pinned Eddie underneath him. “You are the most vile human being on the planet.”

“Thank you. It’s one of my better qualities.” 

Richie starts a wet trail of kisses down Eddie’s neck, and Eddie just blooms beneath him, baring his throat and cradling him in the ‘v’ of his thighs. Eddie’s lashes flutter against his cheeks as Richie’s mouth finds purchase on the spot between his shoulder and his neck, worrying the skin between his teeth. Richie always gets a juvenile and possessive sense of satisfaction out of leaving marks behind, and Eddie will never complain _while_ it’s happening, and the hours of bitching that he doles out later is always worth it.

“Think…” Eddie trails off for a beat, arching into the scalding hot burn of Richie’s mouth, clenching his jaw to hold back a moan. “Think of all the good qualities you’d have if you started eating that fruit.”

Richie sits back, blinking coyly down at Eddie. “I see one banana I can’t wait to gobble down.”

And maybe as Richie had drifted in and out of sleep on the couch he had been obsessing over Beverly’s accusation — had been turning it around every which way in his thoughts since it went in one ear and bounced off the other, cycling in his brain like the delicates that Eddie so lovingly pops in the washer with more than the recommended amount of hypoallergenic detergent. Maybe it’s become a pervasive worry, clawing at Richie from the inside out.

Maybe.

But he’s blowing his boyfriend on the couch right now, so he’s not really in the mood to address it.

—————————————————

It’s a few hours later that he thinks of it again, as they’re walking Penny with the sun setting slowly behind them. They’re not holding hands, but every swing of their arms makes their pinkies brush. It’s a casual affection that Richie isn’t looking forward to mangling.

He just needs to be delicate. _’Beverly thinks that you despise infants._ ’ No, don’t say that. ‘ _Do you want children?_ ’ That is so bad in the other direction. No. He can’t say that, either. ‘ _Are you into little kids?_ ’ What? No. What?

“Bev thinks you’re a freak.”

Well. Okay. He said it, so there’s no taking it back now.

Eddie stops abruptly, making Penny jerk on the end of her leash while Richie stumbles on past him. When Richie catches on and turns back to face him, his expression is pinched. Tense and hurt. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Bev and I were talking about you.” He sees the way Eddie’s glare sharpens and quickly throws his hands up in defense. “Let me finish! She’s just worried about you, I think. She says you’ve been kinda weird. About, you know, her whole pregnancy thing.”

Eddie crosses his arms over his ribcage, hunching over and shrinking down into himself. “I’m not weird.”

His stomach twists, a nauseous stab like the night he’d stayed up until five in the morning eating an entire pan of chicken nuggets and chasing them with bourbon. “I meant you were _acting_ weird.”

“I’m not weird,” Eddie asserts again, voice taking on a snappy, brusque tone. “Sorry to ruin your giggling sleepover gossip, but there’s no juicy story. I’ve just never been good with kids.”

“Eds,” he starts contritely, reaching out to wrap a palm around his boyfriend’s elbow. Eddie tenses, but allows it. “We weren’t trying to talk behind your back or anything. It just came up.”

Eddie starts to thaw a little, shoulders dropping from where they’ve crawled up to his ears. “Okay…”

Richie, stupidly, feels relieved enough to let a small smile stretch across his lips. He slips his hands to Eddie's hips, reeling him in against him. “And bullshit you're not good with kids. You’re a doting, sweet as hell little dynamite. I can tell you’d be an awesome dad.”

“I’m a fucking dad now?” Eddie pushes him off and away, starting off down the sidewalk with Penny at a brisk pace. “What the hell has gotten in to you?”

“ _Me_?” Richie squeaks, using the full advantage of his long legs to catch up with him. “I’m not the one sprinting away from a normal conversation!”

Eddie stops again, wheeling around to jab a finger into Richie’s chest. “Nothing about this is normal! You say I’m being weird, but you’re the weird one. Pressuring me about kids all the sudden, like what, I’m gonna turn in to a fucking house wife?!”

“Dial it down a fucking notch,” Richie mutters low, hot in the face. “We’ve been together seven months. Don’t mock me for thinking about the possibility of a future like that.”

“Seven months? Seven months?!” He clenches his hands in front of Richie's face, like he’s seriously contemplating strangling him. “Alert the fucking media! I was married for seven _years_ , Richie. If I was going to have kids, I would have had them with my _wife_.”

A sinking feeling settles in Richie’s stomach, like literal stones in his gut. It feels like his tongue has swollen eight sizes too big, and his throat has turned into sandpaper. “Your _ex_ -wife,” he starts, just to make himself feel better. “And you didn’t love her.”

“I thought I did,” he says, clipped and pained. He squeezes his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose. “If I wanted kids, that would’ve been the easy time to do it.”

“Cool,” Richie's voice cracks. “Great. Well. You know. Who’s to say you don’t just _think_ you love me, too? I mean, you’re so fucking hyped about easy, right? What’s easier than me? I live right down the hall and I practically threw myself at you.”

“Don’t turn this into something it's not,” Eddie pleads, and he’s looking cagey. Looks like he’s about to dart off into the night.

Richie is shaking like a leaf. He viscerally feels the memory of the water sloshing around his face. The choking pressure of Henry Bowers’s hand twisted into the collar of his shirt. The ache that builds in his chest. “Are you talking about this conversation, or you and me?”

“Please,” Eddie tries again. “You know I’m not good at talking about this stuff.”

“You’re not the only one with baggage, Eddie!” There it is — That breaking point. That feeling of _too much_. Like he’s about to burst open and suffocate anyone within five miles with the sheer emotion pouring out of him. “And I have been patient. I have been gentle. I have given you everything that you wanted that I was capable of providing for you. Don’t I deserve something in return?”

Eddie recoils like he’s been slapped. “I wasn’t aware I wasn’t giving you anything.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Fuck off, Richie,” he bites out, bending down to scoop Penny up in his arms. “Honestly. I can’t… I can’t talk to you like this. And if I could, I probably wouldn’t even fucking want to.”

Eddie storms off toward their building, and Richie is left behind in his dust. He’s filled with an anger he doesn’t know what to do with — doesn’t know where to direct it — so he does what he always does. He turns it inward. Blames that pervasive _too much_. Too intense, too loud, too needy.

He might as well be too drunk.

—————————————————

When he wakes up, it feels like it could be an hour later, or a decade later. Hell, he could be dead. But he feels too shitty to be dead. Dead probably feels a lot less like a hangover.

He opens his eyes and bats blindly around the bedside table for his glasses. When he slips them on his face — only poking himself in the eye _once_ in the process — he focuses on the body stretched out next to him in bed. A head of curly hair, face pressed entirely into the pillow, and a shirt long gone.

Richie swats lazily at Stan’s back, getting the world’s most miserable groan in response. “It’s fair to assume we got trashed and fucked wild and dirty, right?”

Stan lifts his head, displaying deep pillow lines and a glare that could give Medusa a run for her money. “No, _you_ got trashed, bullied me into doing tequila shots, cried under the kitchen table, demanded a hug, and then vomited down my back.”

“So it was a good night,” Richie laughs, because, as previously established, jokes equal safe.

Rolling his eyes, Stan flops over onto his back. “No. Nobody had a good night. Bill kept texting me because he could hear your screaming sobs through the wall.”

Richie pales, sitting up too fast and almost giving Stan a repeat puke performance. “You don’t think—”

“No,” Stan cuts him off, tone softer as he gently presses Richie back against his pillows. “Eddie didn’t hear you. What’s the matter with you, Rich? You think he wouldn’t have been here in a second if he heard?”

He shrugs, ashamed and embarrassed about all the wrong things. “We got in a fight.”

“So?” He’s looking at Richie like he’s stupid, and that’s at least normal. “He’s still Eddie. He still loves you. He’d punch himself in the face if he saw the state you were in.”

Richie smiles a little dreamily, both at the reassurance that he and Eddie are ultimately still okay and the fact that Stan is here making him feel better. “Are _you_ going to punch him in the face? To defend my honor.”

“No, I’m going to punch **you** in the face.”

“What?” Richie jerks upright again, and if he gets too nauseous to hold back his bile it would serve Stan right. “Fucker. Why?”

Wordlessly, Stan rolls onto his side and wraps an arm around Richie’s waist. They both smell vile, and they’re sticky with tequila sweat, but he holds him close. “You get one pass from me, Richie. One. You don’t get to go slipping back into this nonsense because you hit a bump in the road.”

“I wasn’t trying to… I don’t know, backslide or something.”

“Nobody tries to. Why would anybody want that?” He gently bumps his forehead against Richie’s temple. “You’re smarter than that. You’re smarter than last night.”

“It’s not like I need it,” Richie defends. It’s his old argument, and it’s true. It always has been. That just never really made it much better. “It’s not like I can’t resist. I don’t wake up in the morning and think ‘ _Wow I can’t function today without that good ol’ booze_.’ It’s just… I know it would make it—”

He stops so abruptly he bites the tip of his tongue.

Stan lifts his head, eyebrows furrowed in concern. “What?”

But Richie is laughing. It’s humorless, half-manic and half-pained. “It would make it _easier_.”

“I feel like you’re having some kind of revelation over there,” Stan starts, stroking at his shoulder with all the uncomfortable support he can muster. “Or a break down? I don’t know, they tend to look the same.”

“It's both, maybe,” Richie concedes, trying to physically rub the ache out of his chest. “I’m just an idiot.”

And an asshole. He’s one big idiot-asshole sandwich. He forgets sometimes how different he and Eddie are. They feel like the same person, but they’re so fundamentally different. Richie shuts down by numbing himself. Indulgence is his coping mechanism. But Eddie is all about deprivation.

When Richie couldn’t handle the hurt, he drowned it in happiness in a bottle. He twisted his mind in a hazy, liquid euphoria and lived what he could pretend was his best life. Eddie severed the hurt like a limb, but he took all the good parts with it. He convinced himself living half a life was worth it, and gave up everything that risked the chance of feeling too good.

The second Richie felt out of his depth, he fell right back into his old pattern. Of course Eddie would, too. This whole thing is new for them in different ways. Maybe Richie doesn’t know how to temper the all-consuming affection and desire he has for Eddie, but Eddie isn’t always going to know how to let the things he wants into his life.

Eddie panics, and he grasps for what’s easy. No resistance, no feedback, no challenges. If Richie thrives on the approval of laughter, then Eddie sustains himself on uninhibited praise. To him, there is a correct answer to life, and he strives every day to be it.

Kids are… Well, they’re a reflection of all the things you could be doing wrong. It’s a big deal. Richie gets that. It’s a miracle that after all Eddie’s been through he could knock down his walls enough to let _Richie_ in, adding a baby into the mix — down the hall or in a hypothetical future — is a whole new crazy bag of cats.

Richie is astonished by every day he gets to spend with a guy like Eddie. It feels like it’s what he’s been building up to his entire life. But for Eddie, even the thought of a future outside of his loveless marriage seemed impossible less than a year ago. It takes adjusting. It takes time.

Well. Richie has time. He has all the time in the world to give to Eddie, if the stubborn bastard will take it.

“I really love him,” Richie says softly.

Stan’s eyes go gooey and warm in a way Richie’s never seen directed at anyone besides Bill. “I know you do. Relationships have problems, Richie. That’s normal. You’re going to fight, but you’re going to make up, too.”

A soft knock on the door cuts off Richie’s reply. He perks up, too scared to hope it’s Eddie, but doing it anyway. His whole body leans toward the door, as if he can figure out who’s on the other side without ever opening it.

“Get up,” Stan says half-laughing, shoving Richie by the shoulder. “He’s not going to wait out there forever. This is the good part after the fighting, you idiot.”

Richie practically falls out of bed in his scramble to cross through two rooms to the door. He fumbles with the knob and throws the door open, heart hammering against his ribcage when he finds Eddie staring back at him. It takes everything he has not to lunge forward and wrap him up in a hug.

Eddie looks like shit. Probably not half as bad as Richie looks, but certainly rough. His hair is a ruffled mess, and he’s got the beginnings of stubble across his jaw. His eyes look red and tired, and he must have been gnawing on his lower lip all night if the swelling is anything to go by. He’s sort of slumped over against the doorway, like every muscle in his body has worn out.

“Richie,” he starts softly. It’s wobbly and tentative, and something in Richie soars. Hearing his name fall from those lips is something he’s taken for granted, it seems. He wants to hear Eddie say his name in a million more ways for a million more days. “Can I come in?”

“Of course.” He makes a sweeping welcoming gesture as he steps out of the way, trying not to come off too eager. But god, he wants to kiss him. He wants to start and never stop.

Eddie shuffles in, hands wringing in front of him. “Richie, I— Oh.” He blinks and tenses as Stan ambles into the room. “I can come back later?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Stan says rolling his eyes. “I’m on my way out. I have a fiancé who gets increasingly grumpy the longer he has to wait for his Saturday spooning.”

Richie goes through the dramatic motions of gagging. “Gross. When did the two of you grow vaginas? I would’ve sent my condolences.”

Stan doesn’t justify that with a response, but still somehow manages an air of sass as he slips into the shirt he brought out with him. It’s one of Richie’s — the least obnoxious one he owns. A simple dark blue. It’s clean, but riddled with wrinkles.

Eddie has said it’s one of his favorite shirts on Richie, and Richie can tell the second he recognizes it. His cheeks flush a blotchy pink as his mouth presses into a thin line. Stiffly, his arms cross over his chest, like he knows he’s being ridiculous but he can’t help it. He refuses to look at Richie or Stan, eyes dropping to the floor.

A smile sneaks its way across Richie’s lips without permission. He closes the door with a flourish after Stan slips out, and spins on his heel to face Eddie. “You’re jealous.”

“I’m not jealous,” Eddie hotly protests.

“You are.” Richie can’t help the rising feeling of glee. “You’re jealous of Stan.”

Eddie crosses over to him in quick strides. He twists his fingers in the front of Richie’s shirt and tugs him down into a bruising kiss. It starts filthy from the get go, with Eddie coaxing Richie’s mouth open and flicking his tongue behind his teeth. Richie moans, helpless and loving it.

When they part, Eddie looks self-satisfied by the dazed expression clouding Richie’s face. “I know there’s nothing to worry about with Stan,” he says shortly. “I just like walking around in stuff that shows I’m yours, and I… I don’t like sharing. Even if it’s just appearances.”

Richie skims his palms up Eddie’s sides, coasting over his chest and neck to tenderly cup his jaw. “So you’re still mine?”

Eddie’s face crumples — something wrecked and pained. “Of course I am. Are you still mine?”

“Yes.” The air punches out of him in a shaky, relieved sigh. “Yes. Always.”

Eddie drapes his arms over Richie’s shoulders, leaning up to press a reverent kiss to his cheek. “I’m sorry, Rich. I don’t even know what happened to me. I just lost my mind.”

“You don’t have to be sorry.”

“But I _am_.” He tangles his fingers in Richie’s hair, just resting there, like it’s where he belongs. “Kids freak me out, okay? Obviously. And I was just scared that if I was honest about it, you’d run in the other direction.”

A terrible ache plants its first roots in the pit of Richie’s stomach. He folds his too long arms around Eddie, like some kind of overly sentimental orangutan. “You can always be honest with me.”

“I know that," Eddie says muffled into his chest. “I just don’t always _know_ that.” He tilts his face up, sharp chin digging into Richie’s sternum. “I’ve always been afraid of kids. Afraid that… I don’t know, that I’m going to screw them up just by being near them. That my crazy will start to bleed over into them, and they’ll start to think they’re dirty too, and the last thing I want is—”

Since his hands are occupied with holding Eddie, Richie quiets him with the only thing he has available — his lips. “You’re not your mom.”

A small, grateful smile blooms on Eddie’s face.

An awful urge consumes Richie.

_Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it._

“You’re not half as hot as she is.”

And Eddie is spluttering out a laugh where any other person on earth would have decked him. Richie has the silvery, barely there scar on the bridge of his nose to prove it. Eddie is beautiful. Gorgeous, with his dorky, nasally laugh. Incandescent as he tugs teasingly at the root of Richie’s hair.

“You’re such a fucking asshole,” he smiles, cheeks flushed pink with joy. “God, I love you.”

They say it all the time, but it still gets Richie hot. He would’ve thought he was the kind of guy that ran the other way when shit got serious, but intimacy has him whipped. He lives for it. Knowing what kind of shampoo Eddie prefers, or Eddie knowing exactly which of his joints twinge in the cold, or making eye contact across the room when someone says something funny so they can share the laugh.

He tugs Eddie closer so they’re pressed cheek to cheek. They sway a little on their feet, not quite rocking, but not quite dancing either. It’s aimless and amazing, and Richie thinks that if he has to die at some point, he’d probably like to do it in Eddie’s arms.

“I know I was weird about kid stuff, too,” Richie murmurs. He closes his eyes and lets his body soak in the warmth of Eddie’s. “I think I just never thought about having any kind of kid in my life before, and my brain went from zero to a hundred.”

Eddie gives an amused hum. Richie can feel the smile against the side of his face. “Your brain? Working overtime? I’m shocked.”

“I didn't mean to pressure you,” Richie continues. His hands stroke down Eddie’s back of their own volition, halting low along the curve of his spine. He knows how Eddie likes that — likes the weight of his broad palms resting like a tease just above the swell of his ass. “I know this kind of relationship is new to both of us.”

Eddie starts to squirm, which spells out bad news for the important and serious conversation they’re trying to have. Richie can feel him getting hard against his thigh, and he’s not a super hero. He wasn’t born to resist temptation like that. And he’d fucking like to see Clark Kent deny a horny Edward Kaspbrak.

That ass is like kryptonite.

Eddie is kissing him in a way that is more like a series of shorts nips. Punishing, and teasing, and hot. “It just felt like we were skipping some parts in between,” he tries, like Richie is capable of processing anything at this point. “I can’t go from point A to point Q like that.”

“I feel like we’re at least at point E,” Richie argues. His brow furrows and smooths out again, brain blanking out when Eddie flicks open the button of his jeans. “Fuck.”

“Yes,” Eddie agrees — though whether it’s to the progression of their relationship or the expletive, Richie can’t be sure. “I just need to take things a bit slow.”

“This?” Richie questions, voice peaking an octave as he gestures between their groins.

Eddie laughs and punctuates his amusement by tugging Richie’s jeans down around his knees. “No. God no. I want you to be so far in me I feel you in my chest cavity.”

Possessed by some kind of beastly erotic demon, Richie hauls Eddie up off his feet. He goes without complaint this time, locking his thighs around Richie’s hips in a death grip. They both moan as their erections brush, like they haven’t known the touch of a man in months, when really it’s been less than a day.

Stan was so right — making up is the fun part.

All thoughts and concerns that aren’t getting Eddie naked fly out of Richie’s brain, like old-timey bathwater out a window. Stumbling as best as he can with his pants still looped around his ankles, he heads for the kitchen. He wants to give Eddie the ride of his fucking life, and he knows how much he gets off on doing things he thinks he’s not supposed to. The desperate whine he gets when he sets Eddie down on the island counter reassures him that he’s made the right call.

Eddie whips his own shirt off like he’s in an Olympic race to get laid. “Lube?” he barks, already arching his hips off the marble to claw off his sweatpants.

“Hold on,” Richie wheezes, feeling perpetually like a sixteen-year-old virgin whenever his boyfriend starts flashing skin. He at least has the sense to step out of his pants before he gets his feet moving again, and then he’s dashing to the bedroom to rifle through the bedside table. He nabs a condom and lube — the good stuff that is more expensive than it should be, but makes Eddie feel spoiled and decadent.

When he gets back to his open concept living room/kitchen, Eddie is already completely stripped. “God, you’re a concept I want to open.”

“What?” Eddie’s looking at him like he might be in the middle of a stroke. “Fuck it, I don’t even care. Just get over here.”

Richie is good at following directions when dicks are involved. He flounces over, pressing Eddie flat on his back so fast the cold of the marble makes him hiss. Richie doesn’t pause, just loops an arm around each of Eddie’s legs so he can bend down and get his mouth on those thighs. He could build a monument to Eddie Kaspbrak’s thighs. Worship at the altar with teeth and tongue all day long.

It’s an excruciating tease for Eddie. At first it’s nice. Of course it is — Richie is good with his mouth in every way imaginable. But the foreplay drags on into self-indulgence, and the simmer of excitement breaks into frustration. His inner thighs are slick with spit and glowing red from the bite of teeth and the scrape of stubble.

He’s making short grunts deep in his chest, and Richie knows his play time is up. He can either get on with the show or have half his hair yanked out of his scalp. Eddie’s done it before — he’s bratty that way.

Richie pops the cap on the lube and slicks his fingers up quick. He presses two digits into Eddie, greedily drinking in the sight of his head tipping back. Scissoring his fingers, he can’t help but grin as Eddie’s knees squeeze him, his whole body taught and desperate. Just how Richie loves him.

“You like that?” He asks, and he almost doesn’t recognize his own voice, as rough as it is.

Eddie slings his arm over his face, hiding in the crook of his elbow even as his legs pull Richie closer. “You know I do.”

And yeah, he does. But hearing him say it gives Richie a smug sense of pride. He presses a third finger in and curls, tapping insistently at Eddie’s prostate. “Tell me about it.”

Eddie drops his arm and looks up at Richie through wild, exasperated eyes. “Richie…”

Richie just grins, moving his fingers faster, rougher. Eddie’s jaw falls open, and his hands fly up to grip the counter on either side of his head. Mercilessly, Richie wraps his hand around Eddie’s length, stroking in time with the movements of his fingers.

“If you make me come like this I’m gonna be so mad,” Eddie gasps. He screws his eyes shut as a deeper pink flush seeps across his cheeks and down his chest. “I like it, okay? Your fingers are fucking phenomenal. You make me crazy. Now fuck me, Rich, I mean it.”

Richie laughs, but he’s fumbling with the condom. He presses in, and between the tight heat and the loud, ragged sound ripping up out of Eddie’s throat, he’s completely overwhelmed. It’s almost always like this — on the edge of too much sensation. He wonders if the urgency of his need will ever fade. He half worries that it will, and half fears that it won’t.

“Move,” Eddie demands, and it has none of the sweet desperation from before. It’s all hard edges and bristly frustration.

It sends electric tingles up and down Richie’s spine.

So he moves, pouring all of his frantic, inescapable need into the quick, sharp jerk of his hips. He curls his hands around Eddie's thighs in a vice grip, spreading his legs impossibly wide and slamming him back against his pelvis with every thrust. Eddie is a sinfully pretty picture beneath him, and Richie just wishes he was close enough to kiss.

Richie hasn’t even taken his shirt off, and he’s sweating, and in five minutes he’ll surely be covered in jizz, and now he’ll probably never be able to even look at this shirt without popping a boner. But whatever, who cares? If he has to retire a shirt to the back of his closet to make Eddie happy, he would gladly cycle out his entire wardrobe.

When Richie abruptly shifts the angle of his hips, Eddie cries out. His back arches hungrily, and his arm flies out beside him like he’s trying to ground himself. Instead his forearm jostles a mug off the counter, sending it tumbling to the tile to shatter.

“Don’t you dare stop,” Eddie threatens breathlessly at Richie’s uncertain pause. His hands snap to Richie’s hips, urging him on. “Come on. Come _on_.”

Richie resumes his rhythm with renewed vigor. He wants to make Eddie feel good, but god he’s close. He feels like he’s hurdling towards the finish line with no way to turn back. How could he help it? Eddie’s face is wrecked and pink, mouth hanging open with moans spilling out with every bounce.

“Eddie,” he warns, voice strangled. One of his hands leaves Eddie’s thigh to grip his length, pumping him fast and twisting his wrist with every stroke. “I’m gonna come.”

“Don’t,” Eddie begs. “Not yet.”

Richie does everything he can think of to hold off. Complicated mental mathematics he hasn’t attempted in fifteen years. Biting down hard on the inside of his cheek and focusing on the copper splash of taste and the bloom of pain. Looking away from the intoxicating view of Eddie beneath him — but that one doesn’t last long, he’s never been able to resist temptation like that.

“Yes,” Eddie groans long and deep and loud. “Richie, baby, _yes_.”

His orgasm hits him like a train. But it’s fine, because the flicks of his wrist don’t stutter, and before he’s even recovered from the dizzying waves of pleasure, Eddie is coming too.

He slumps forward, burying his face against Eddie’s chest as he catches his breath. He could pass out right now, with Eddie pinned like a butterfly between him and the counter. Every muscle in his body is going to be screaming at him later, but it was worth it. So worth it. He should start going to the gym if he has any hopes of having any amount of athletic sex past forty.

Eddie starts to laugh, jostling Richie’s head enough that he tilts his face upward, trying to focus on him through tilted, foggy glasses. “What?”

“I’m definitely going to be feeling that tomorrow,” Eddie sighs happily. His hands move to rub circles into Richie’s back. “And I told Ben I’d help him move into Bev’s place.”

Richie laughs too, because it’s his second favorite thing to do with a naked and smiling Edward Kaspbrak. “I’ll do all the heavy lifting,” he promises, even though his lower back is already making it _very_ known how out of shape he is.

Eddie rolls his eyes, lifting his head to press a clumsy kiss to Richie’s hairline. “We’ll trick Mike into doing the heavy lifting.”

“You’re a dream, Eds.”

He’s sure he repeats the sentiment several times later, when he and Eddie are fighting back giggles at the fact that two grown men were never meant to fit into his bathtub at the same time. And again when Eddie digs the heels of his palms into the seizing muscles of his lower back, dropping soothing kisses over his shoulders along the way. Probably another time, too, after Eddie has fallen asleep with Penny between them, arm unconsciously stretching across the mattress so Richie can lace their fingers.

Somehow, Richie means it more every time.

—————————————————

Richie is biting his lip so he doesn’t laugh as Stan’s eyes meet his in the mirror. There’s an inherent threat in the gaze, but Richie can’t help it — the awkward stiffness of Stan’s shoulders as a tailor flops a measuring tape around his inseam is peak comedy. Richie has two dozen jokes already formulating, and the rising flush on Stan’s cheeks have more coming.

“Be an adult,” Stan snaps, and Richie breaks.

He clutches his stomach he’s laughing so hard, and he tips sideways into Bill. “Looking a little uptight, Stan the Man. Maybe you’ll loosen up when you finally lose your virginity.”

Bill’s mouth flaps, like he can’t decide if he wants to stand up for Stan or defend his own sex life. He settles for something in between. “Hey, Stan is a total minx.”

Stan drops his head back on a long suffering sigh. “Bill, all the vendors have our deposits, so I _am_ going to marry you, but there’s nothing keeping me from divorcing you immediately.”

“I was helping!”

“You were _not_.” Stan jerks as the tailor moves to measure his seat. “You were giving Richie more ammunition.”

Richie loops his arm around Bill’s neck, ruffling his hair like they're in middle school. “Give Billy Boy a break. I think it’s sweet that he thinks you’re sexy. I mean, I don’t know what nuns he was fucking before you, but—”

“Enough,” Stan says, sounding exactly like his father the handful of times Richie got to meet him. The tailor has moved to measuring his sleeve, so his spine relaxes at last. But a mean sort of delight sparkles in his eyes. “Not all of us have boyfriends who moan so loud the entire floor can hear.”

Richie releases Bill and sits up ramrod straight, like a boy who’s gotten reprimanded in school. Or like a boy who _cares_ that he’s gotten reprimanded in school, because honestly, _can’t relate_. “Shut up.”

“He woke up _Beverly_ , and she sleeps like the dead.”

The tailor finishes Stan’s measurements and does a wonderful job of pretending she’s not hearing way more than she wants to. “I can start on who’s next.”

Bill stands with an awkward smile and steps up toward the mirror. When Stan takes his place next to Richie, Richie pinches the back of his arm in the way he knows he hates, because he’s explicitly told him as much on multiple occasions. Stan backhands him in retaliation, which devolves into the two of them wresting and flailing on the tailor’s fancy leather couch.

“I swear to god,” Richie warns, squeezing Stan’s nose between his knuckles. “If you breathe a word about noise to Eddie I will never forgive you. I’d never get laid again.”

Stan viciously twists Richie’s nipple, making him cry out in an octave he didn’t think he was capable of. “And that would be bad for me how?”

Richie releases him, panting hard, and holds his palms up in a truce. A physical truce, anyway. “Because I’ll ruin your sex life right back, you little shit.”

“Oh yeah?” Stan’s rolling his eyes like he’s untouchable. Like Richie doesn’t know him entirely too well. “How?”

“I’ll tell Bill about Valentine’s Day 2015.”

Stan blushes so deep he practically turns purple. “You will _never_.”

Richie sticks his tongue out between his teeth. “Then keep your rat mouth shut.”

“There's nothing Stan could do that would ever make me want him less,” Bill says, too earnest for his own good. Fucking idiot.

Richie grins so big he must’ve grown extra teeth for the occasion. “It’s not about what he’s done, it’s _who_.”

“I will bury you,” Stan threatens in a voice full of deadly calm and eyes full of feral murder. “I will tell Eddie he sounds like a back alley hooker, and snitch to Mike that you broke his antique clock, and so help me god, I will forward your mother every segment TMZ has ever done on you.”

The front door opens with a cheerful chime, and Eddie flutters in with a frenetic energy and exertion-flushed cheeks. “Sorry I’m late! The new guy wouldn’t stop talking at the meeting, and then the train took forever to…” He trails off, eyes darting between Richie and Stan. “Why do you both look constipated?”

“You must be Eddie,” the tailor smiles mildly, pausing in her measurements of Bill. “I’ve heard so much about you from your friends.”

Richie and Stan reset the throw pillows on the couch in one prim, synchronized movement, telegraphing with their proper adult body language that they’re going to behave. Richie’s respect for the tailor triples. It takes one hell of a woman to jab at their weaknesses with a sociopathic glee.

Eddie — blissfully unaware of the threat lacing her words —preens a bit under the attention. “All good things, I hope.”

“Wonderful things,” Richie promises, tugging him down to fill the space left between him and Stan on the couch. From his perspective, it’s not even a lie. It’s not his fault if Eddie wouldn’t agree.

Eddie leans in to kiss him short and sweet, and though Richie’s lost count of how many times their lips have met like this, his lashes still dip and his grin still goes slack — like a dopey caricature of a lovesick dog. Stan waits until Richie regains enough brain function to notice that he’s rolling his eyes at him.

“We made a mistake asking you two to be the best men. You’re going to be making puppy dog eyes in all the pictures, and you’re going to steal our thunder.”

A sly, too wide smirk cuts across Eddie’s mouth, and goosebumps are already breaking out all over Richie’s body. He knows that look — he sees it when Eddie races him to the corner store, or instigates a wrestling match, or bets him that he can’t outlast him when they’re jacking each other off fast and nasty. His competitive nature drives Richie bananas in all the best ways.

“It’s big of you to admit that we’re the better couple,” Eddie says haughtily.

The tailor sighs at the same time that Stan squawks back, “I did _not_ say that.”

“How are you the better couple?” Bill asks in disbelief, feeling confident enough that Stan will deem him helpful this time around. “You and Richie bicker _all the time_.”

Richie shrugs, hugging Eddie tight against his side. “That’s just foreplay, man.”

Eddie throws his head back and laughs, loud and dorky and glorious. He swats at his chest for good measure, and fuck if Richie doesn’t love that. It’s like a badge of honor. It makes him act out in even more foolish and insane ways, trying to draw the same reaction out again.

“Bill and I are fun too,” Stan says with a seriousness that is in no way indicative of any amount of fun. “We’re planning on investing in a vacation home.”

“It’s in New Mexico.” Richie’s voice holds enough derision to set Eddie off in another round of cackles. “No one’s impressed.”

Lacing their fingers, Eddie gives Richie’s hand an affectionate little squeeze. “Besides, Richie’s famous, so that automatically puts us, like, five points ahead.”

Bill splutters in indignation. “I'm famous, too!”

Eddie scoffs. “To nerds, maybe.”

“And Richie is famous to sleazy frat boys and twelve-year-old girls who don’t know what half his jokes mean.” Stan is vibrating so hard with rage that Richie can practically feel the couch shaking. “Writing is classy. Elegant and smart.”

“Dude,” Richie laughs. “He writes horror. It’s not that deep.”

“And Richie is smart.” Eddie leans so far into Richie’s space he’s practically in his lap. “He always helps me with the crossword in the mornings, and he knows most of the answers on Jeopardy, and a lot of the material in his specials is actually really complex. He’s the smartest guy I know.”

And _Oh_ , Richie thinks, with a clarity as sluggish as an upended bottle of corn syrup. _Eddie is proud of me. Proud to **be with** me_.

The realization is dizzying, and with Eddie, Stan, and Bill still shouting back and forth, an ache starts to throb at the front of his brain. His heart is pounding, and the room feels like it’s cranked up to 200 degrees, and he’s smiling so wide he’s probably more tooth than man. This is exactly how it felt those three or four times he’d snorted cocaine in his misspent youth. Like he’s waded into dark, dangerous waters that whisper promises of nothing but good times.

Richie loses himself for a long while in the buzz of his boyfriend’s pride. He only tunes back in when Stan shouts, “Don’t bring his dick into this! We’ve all seen it! And by that fact alone that’s minus ten points!”

He doesn’t know if anyone is actually keeping track of the score at this point, but he doesn’t really care. His best friend in the whole world is marrying the love of his life in three months. Bev is so pregnant she’s set to pop any minute. And Eddie is proud to be with him.

How the fuck did he get here?

Maybe Eddie’s feelings shouldn’t come as so much of a surprise to him. After all, Eddie goes out with him in public on dates, where they hold hands and kiss in full view. He even smiles when he sees pictures fans took of them on twitter. He steals Richie’s clothes like it’s his job. He invites Richie to work functions, which Richie never has the courage to go to for fear of not fitting in, but always appreciates the sentiment.

Eddie kicked his way out of a closet and transitioned directly into screaming about his love for Richie to anyone who would ( _or wouldn’t_ ) listen. Because he likes Richie, and not in the way a lot of people do, in spite of his obnoxiousness. For whatever reason, Eddie likes him _because_ of every grating habit and quirk. He thinks that Richie fits in wherever they go, so long as they’re together.

After all four of them have had their measurements taken and they’ve confirmed which fabrics they’d like, the tailor shoos them out of her store with the patience of a saint. Before he goes, Richie snags one of her business cards left in a stack on the front counter. He doesn’t quite know why.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I _did_ add a chapter. Because this monster refuses to end.
> 
> *****For more specific warnings related to this chapter, please see the end notes.

The beginning of the end starts four days later, and it’s entirely Eddie’s fault.

Richie is sprawled out on his back on the floor of Mike’s living room. Mike’s longterm girlfriend, Sarah, lies shoulder to shoulder with him, pointing the other direction. Less than a foot away from them is Mike, sitting cross legged with his back against the couch and his head tipped lazily against the cushions.

They pass around a joint between the three of them.

“Where'd you get this stuff?” Richie asks, time ticking by at half-pace.

Sarah exhales heavily and passes him the blunt. “I confiscated it off my nephew. Who knew fifteen year olds knew where to get the good shit?”

Mike laughs low and indulgent, scooping up Sarah’s feet to plop them in his lap. “Maybe you’re just a lightweight, ever think about that?”

“Oh. Maybe. I mean, I haven’t smoked in… What? Twelve years?”

Richie’s eyebrows hike up his forehead as he holds the smoke in his lungs. Twelve years is a long time. “That’s like forever,” he mutters, breathing out through his nose. “That’s like, the lifespan of a car.”

“Or how long it takes to go through school,” Sarah agrees, nodding sagely.

“That's like… FDR’s presidential term.”

“Alright,” Mike starts, leaning over to pluck the joint from Richie’s fingers. “So you’re _both_ lightweights.”

Richie wheezes a laugh, lifting his arm to deliver a poorly aimed middle finger salute. “Maybe you’re just a heavyweight, Mikey.”

Mike shrugs amiably, and only smiles as Richie rolls so his head is resting on his lap next to Sarah’s socked feet. “I think it can be a bit of both.”

“I wonder the last time Eddie got baked,” Richie wonders aloud, because if he’s awake, it’s only a matter of time before he’s talking about his boyfriend. “He’s probably a lightweight, too. Like a mega lightweight.”

“Invite him over,” Mike suggests. “It’s not like you two need any more of this.”

Brilliant. What a stroke of fucking genius.

Richie’s got his phone out before Mike’s even finished talking. He types out a text slowly and meticulously, rereading it five times to make sure there aren’t any mistakes, and again a sixth time because he hasn’t processed a single word. “ _Come join us at Mike’s when yuor home! I miss tat cute little butt._ ”

The reply is almost immediate, and leads with a barrage of eye rolling emojis. Richie loves to count them and treat them like a predictor for Eddie’s mood. Like a pain chart at the doctor’s office, but for how sassy and fun Eddie’s going to be for the day. Nine of them bodes well for how keyed up Richie’s feeling. “ _Sure. Just got in, but I have to change first_.”

Richie hugs his phone to his chest and settles in to wait with a drug-induced patience. He doesn’t worry quite like Eddie does, but junk still stacks in his brain. Negativity, and self-doubt, and icy-gut fear that slams down like hyper speed Tetris blocks. The weed is like jabbing a pause button. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t smoke as often as he used to.

Beside him, Sarah squirms around until her head takes the place of her feet on Mike’s thigh and she’s bumping temples with Richie. “Do you think you and Eddie will still be together in twelve years?"

“Yes,” he answers with a clarity and confidence he lacks during sobriety. “We’ll be together until I inevitably die in a tragically hilarious way. But he keeps taking care of me to make sure that doesn’t happen. So who knows, we might end up two old queens who kick it peacefully in their sleep, side by side.”

“Like _The Notebook_ ,” Mike nods with a warm approval. It sets Richie off in a fit off giggles.

But sometime during the laughter that seems to span a lifetime — or at least long enough to make his sides ache — there’s a brisk knock at the door. It’s Eddie. It has to be Eddie. If it’s not Eddie, Richie is going to slither out of his skin and die raw and abandoned right in the middle of Mike’s floor.

Somehow his heavy, sluggish limbs are all functional and steady, because Richie is suddenly up before he remembers telling himself to stand. He’s at the door faster than he thinks humans should be capable of moving. Then he’s flinging it open and staring wide-eyed at Eddie on the other side, like he’s somehow surprised to see the person he’s been waiting for his entire sorry existence.

“Well hi, Rich.” Eddie blinks at him owlish and impatient.

A slow, goofy, too-wide smile stretches and stretches and stretches across Richie’s elastic mouth. But he clamps his teeth tightly together, afraid all his happiness will fall out.

Eddie narrows his eyes, gently grabbing Richie’s chin between his thumb and index finger. “Are you fucking high?”

“I am.” He wraps a hand around Eddie’s raised wrist, like a sloth settling in for his fifteen hour nap. “Wanna join me?"

As it turns out, Eddie isn’t anything close to a lightweight. He coughs a few times on his first drag, but the high never bowls him over. He just mellows out, talking at a normal human pace for once. His reaction is almost as mild as Mike’s, and Richie honestly can’t figure out if he’s jealous, outraged, or in awe.

“What?” Eddie laughs, snuggling back against Richie’s chest as he sits between his legs on the floor. “I spent most of my twenties stoned out of my mind.”

“Maybe that’s why you married Myra,” Mike drawls smoothly.

Sarah and Eddie laugh, but Richie can’t find it in himself to be amused. It’d be easy enough to say he’s annoyed he didn’t think of the joke first, but he knows that’s not where the tiny, flickering ember of anger comes from. His blood boils every time he hears her name, and now with all of his inhibitions bulldozed like this, he feels like a volcano bubbling over.

Richie’s familiar with the butterfly effect, so he knows it’s stupid to wish that Eddie never married Myra. He knows that if he hadn’t, he probably wouldn’t have ended up in this apartment building, and Richie might not have ever met him. Might not have ever gotten the chance to love him. But a sappy, romantic part also likes to believe that they find each other in every imaginable timeline.

But Richie can’t change the past. All he can do is try to erase the grooves she wore into Eddie’s brain. Replace the memories of her with thoughts of Richie. Leave behind his own marks with teeth and hands and a tidal wave of earnest confessions.

“ _Oooh_ ,” Sarah laughingly jeers as Richie nuzzles his way up the side of Eddie’s throat. “He didn’t like that joke.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he still reaches back to cup Richie’s strong jaw. “Look at that. I left my wife for the guy and he’s _still_ insecure.”

“You don’t think you’d have done it anyway?” Mike asks around a yawn. One of his hands strokes a lazy rhythm up and down Sarah’s back, and she’s not looking all that awake, either. “Leave your wife, I mean.”

“Nah,” he says, sounding too cool for school. His voice is rougher when he smokes, and every molecule of Richie’s body is straining forward in attention. “I needed to be dicked to my senses.”

“I’m happy to have offered my services,” Richie breathes, forgetting to be smug as he watches Eddie take the last slow drag off the blunt before stubbing it out on a coaster-cum-ashtray. Eddie’s hair is disheveled, and his big bedroom eyes are hooded, and he’s so, so warm against Richie’s chest. Richie feels himself start to harden against Eddie’s lower back. “Fuck.”

Eddie bites his lower lip to hold back a smile. He squirms back against Richie’s groin in a slow, deliberate tease. “You ‘bout ready for bed, Rich?”

His beautiful boyfriend is a peculiar little case. On any given day, he’s painfully reserved around their friends, refusing to even slip Richie tongue if he thinks someone might eventually glance their way. Meanwhile he’s effusively affectionate in front of the greater public — posting pictures on Instagram of them snuggled up in bed, sitting in Richie’s lap on the crowded subway, and dipping his hand in Richie’s back pocket when they traipse through the underground food market. He likes when Richie mentions him on talk shows, but turns purple in embarrassment when Bev asks about their dates.

But being stoned apparently melts away all of Eddie’s deeper intimacy problems. Or maybe it’s just because Sarah is essentially down for the count and Mike looks like he’s on another planet. Maybe it’s a bit of everything. All Richie knows is that, while he’s happy to scream into the void about loving Eddie until his voice goes hoarse, he could get addicted to these honest, snapshot moments among friends.

Richie tilts Eddie’s head back until he can drop a slanted kiss to his lips. It’s achingly slow — not sweet, but not quite dirty, either. He dips his tongue just past Eddie’s lips, flicking teasingly against Eddie’s tongue to coax it out like a game of tag. Eddie takes the bait, swiping his tongue along the soft, sensitive underside of Richie’s upper lip.

It reminds Richie of the kiss Adrian and Don shared at their wedding two and a half years ago. It was passionate enough that Don’s grandma had to look away, but appropriate enough that no children were traumatized. And Richie’s hazy brain circles ‘round and ‘round the image — the altar, and the flowers, and the teary-eyed friends.

“I like it when you let me know you’re all mine.” He doesn’t remember giving his mouth permission to talk, but it’s too late to reel the words back in now.

Eddie furrows his brow, but it’s a soft, amused thing. “I do that all the time.”

“No,” Richie says, slurring in a way that makes the word feel a million years long. “When you tell _me_. Not everybody else you’re trying to prove something to. _Me_.”

Eddie’s eyes shift into something heavy and dark. He’s scrambling up on his feet, tugging on Richie’s hand. “Come down the hall with me. I have an idea.”

“Uh.” Richie follows after Eddie, because he could lead him anywhere. Especially now, with his dick going from semi-invested to a full on raging interest. “Later, Mike.”

Mike waves them off, half-amused and half-asleep. The door practically slams behind them as Eddie hurries along, and Richie jerks at the abrupt, loud sound. They dissolve into giddy laughter, toppling over against the wall next to Stan and Bill’s door.

“ _Shh_ ,” Richie hushes through a wild grin. “Stanny’s gonna come out and yell at us.”

Eddie hooks two fingers in the front waistband of Richie’s jeans, sharply tugging him towards his apartment. “Stan could initiate a nuclear attack right now and I wouldn’t give a shit.”

They slip through Eddie’s front door like a pair of dizzy elephants, knocking jackets off the hook by the door and jostling the side table. They trade messy, deep kisses that take a sharp desperate turn when Eddie wiggles a hand down Richie’s pants to cup his ass. Richie accidentally slams Eddie’s back against the wall in his excitement, and an apology is halfway out of his mouth until Eddie dips in and bites down hard just below his jaw.

“Fuck, Eds. You tryin’ to kill me?”

Eddie pulls back to smile, his red, glassy eyes crinkling at the corners. “You’re right. If I’m trying to prove I’m all yours, you should be leaving the marks, huh?”

Richie’s brain melts and leaks down to his toes. He reaches out to try and tug Eddie back against him, but his muted reaction time is too slow — Eddie has turned on his heel to slink towards his room. “I should… I mean, that’s my cue to follow, right?”

Spinning on his heel to lean indecently against the doorjamb, the world’s most devious and playful smirk tweaks at Eddie’s lips. “No. You’re gonna wait right there and be patient while I set my idea into motion.”

“Right. Your idea.” Richie gulps, and he has such a smart brain — really, he does — but it becomes such a dumb brain when it’s beaten into submission by great weed and an even better ass. “This idea leads to sex, right?”

“If you know what’s good for you.”

The bedroom door closes between them with a decisive click. Penny stares at Richie from her cozy spot on the couch with a distinct air of judgement, and Richie can’t really blame her. He feels like the last year and a half since he’s met Eddie has just kind of happened to him, like he’s just been nodding along to a series of earth shattering events. Like Hurricane Eddie has wrapped him up in the eye of his storm, and all Richie can really do is hang on.

There’s hurried shuffling from the bedroom. A soft _thunk_ and an impatient curse. Richie has no idea what that door is going to open up to, but he’d cross any threshold for Eddie. He’s a helpless, bumbling fool, but with Eddie at the wheel everything’s going to be fine. He’s sure of it.

Finally, after what feels like seven centuries, Eddie calls to him through the door. “You can come in now!”

Richie practically runs to the door, but to be fair, he doesn’t know it’s about to lead to his demise. He has no idea the pervasive, diseased seeds that are about to be planted. There’s no way for him to have known that he’s kicked over the dominos that clatter over in a chain reaction to his insurmountable stupidity. The end of the world as he knows it.

He’s a naïve fool in love, so he pushes open the door and he steps into the room and he freezes. Eddie is sprawled out on his bed, wearing nothing but a pair of red boxer briefs and a black t-shirt that’s so tight it looks like it must have been woven directly onto his body. And Richie recognizes the shirt in the vague sort of way that comes with seeing it a decade ago on hundreds of other people he never actually knew. It’s one of his old tour shirts, the stark white lettering stretching across Eddie’s chest to announce “ _Trashmouth Tozier_.”

Seeing his name, or some version of it — the version he’s come to associate with the parts of himself he’s proud of — pressed so close to Eddie’s body it might as well be a part of him… It sets a fire through Richie’s body from head to toe.

He’s on him between one breath and the next. His kisses are desperate points of worship — peppering across his brow, down the sharp curve of his cheek, lingering greedily over his lips. Being with Eddie normally feels like the rest of the world falls away, but here and now, under the influence of some high school kid’s marijuana, it feels like this _is_ the world. Like nothing else ever existed or will again.

Eddie rolls them over so he’s sitting astride Richie’s hips, grinning down at him with a foggy pride. He opens Richie’s jeans and pulls him out of his boxers, stroking him firm and slow. “So you like it, then?”

An unintelligible sound tumbles off of Richie’s tongue. He rests a palm over Eddie’s forearm, just feeling the flex of muscle there as he teasingly pumps his length. His eyes stay glued to his name branded across Eddie’s chest.

Richie wishes he had known Eddie when he was ten years old, before he’d let confusion, and fear, and fucking Henry Bowers change him. He thinks if they knew each other as kids they would’ve been brave as hell together. He wishes he’d known Eddie when he was fifteen, so he could’ve been kissing him in the backseat of his shitty clunker instead of staring at all the wrong boys. Wishes he’d known him when he was twenty, so instead of hooking up in sticky club bathrooms he could’ve been rolling around in Eddie’s tiny dorm room bed. Known him when he was twenty-five, so he never had to the spend lonely nights in hotel rooms on long tours watching increasingly disturbing porn when he could’ve been panting down the phone line with the love of his life. Known him when he was thirty, so instead of getting his stomach pumped after a long night with a male stripper in possession of a superhuman alcohol tolerance he could have curled up next to Mr. Edward Tozier.

He feels cheated. Like he’s already missed out on so much time already. He doesn’t want to wonder what forty looks like without Eddie, and god forbid forty-five or even _fifty_.

“I love you.” It comes out heavy and abrupt, and despite the fact that he must’ve said this more than any other phrase in his vocabulary at this point, it sounds new. Like it’s the first time all over again. Like it’s somehow more.

Eddie must feel it, too. He stops the brain-melting movements of his hand and slides off of Richie’s lap. “Get naked. Come on. Let’s go.”

It’s not like he’s going to argue with an order like _that_. He almost punches himself in the forehead as he wrestles out of his shirt, and his knees make sick cracking sounds as he kicks wildly out of his jeans and boxers, but he gets it done fast, if not coordinated.

Eddie has already tossed his own underwear across the room, and he’s pushing Richie flat against the mattress as he swings a leg back over his hips. He teasingly lifts the hem of his twink-tight t-shirt, grinning when Richie lets out a dumb, open-mouth moan. “You want me to leave this on?”

“You bet I fucking do.”

He’d be embarrassed by his own eagerness if Eddie wasn’t already reaching for the condom and lube he set out on the bedside table before summoning Richie. At this point, they’re so vividly enacting Richie’s deepest fantasies that Richie can’t be sure he’s not just drifting through a weed coma. Eddie slides the condom over Richie, stroking him like he’s not about to pop off at any second, and Richie knows for sure nothing — not even drug delusions — feels as good as Eddie ever does.

“Oh. _Shit_. Stop. **Okay**.” His voice cracks several times, like he just discovered and undiscovered puberty.

Eddie yanks his hand back like Richie’s dick is a hot stove. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m gonna come, dude,” he pants, readjusting his foggy glasses. “And I was kinda hoping to do it in your ass.”

“God,” Eddie says on a long suffering sigh. “Why do I want to fuck you so bad?”

Richie smooths his fingertips over the t-shirt text, grinning even as Eddie slathers ice cold lube all over his shaft. “Because you love me.”

“Something like that,” Eddie murmurs, lining Richie up at his entrance.

“Wait, did you—”

“Yes,” Eddie answers, short and snappy. “I fingered myself. And don’t give me that look, you take _way_ too long when I let you do it.”

Richie scoffs. “When you _let_ me do it. As if my magic fingers don’t have you— _Nnnnggh_.”

Eddie sinks down around him, and words stop being something Richie’s capable of. It’s almost too good with all of his senses sharper and deeper. Eddie’s bouncing in his lap, and it feels like the rest of his body has dissolved away, like all of his nerves and atoms have centered down to one point, like… Like he’s just a dick. Eddie would probably agree on that point.

But then Eddie’s nails are scratching down his chest, catching at his nipples, and color explodes behind his eyes. “ _Eddie_.”

“Yeah?” He’s grinning like a little imp, pausing in his quick lifts and falls to grind in a slow circle against Richie’s pelvis.

Richie groans and plants his feet on the bed. He bucks his hips up and Eddie gasps sharp and high. But he gets the message — starts slamming down against him with each of Richie’s upward thrusts.

“I’m supposed to be in charge here,” Eddie pants, half-laughing.

“I prefer teamwork,” Richie half-shouts on a moan as Eddie clenches around him.

So that's what they do, moving and sweating and grunting together. And Richie, he’s not a carpenter or a bed engineer or whatever they’re called — he’s still too stoned to really work it out — but he’s a little worried they might break Eddie’s bed frame in two. The headboard is at least leaving some hefty scuffs in the wall, and Stan is most certainly going to be complaining tomorrow about the uncomfortably rhythmic thumping through his own bedroom wall.

But fuck it. When Richie comes he shoots off so hard he’s pretty sure he permanently lost some brain cells. He must have. There’s no other explanation for how tomorrow unfolds.

—————————————————

Richie is sure he must be disgusting. He’s sweating like a cow. He feels it beading on his upper lip, and soaking the pits of his t-shirt, and dripping on his forehead where his curls cling stringy and damp. He looks so much like a near-death tuberculosis patient that he’ll be lucky if Eddie doesn’t quarantine him after one glance.

But he’s not sick, he’s just nervous.

He left Eddie’s apartment that morning while he was still asleep. Which is fine, because they do that all the time — bounce without saying goodbye because they know they’ll see each other around. It just felt different this time. Like he was sneaking out to do something behind his back.

Which, okay, yeah. He kind of was.

He’d barged into the jewelry store two minutes after it opened, startling the nice woman behind the counter. He probably looked like he was about to rob the joint, with his shaking hands and his awful, endless sweating. Then again, she’s probably used to men looking like they’re about to shit their pants.

It took him two hours to pick out the ring, but the nice woman behind the counter — _Linda_ — had been very helpful. She assured him that the girl he was proposing to would say yes. Richie then had half a meltdown where he rambled on about how gay he was for a solid ten minutes without breathing. Linda took a beat before assuring him that the boy he was proposing to would say yes. Richie might have cried.

He did.

He might do it again. Or puke. Or just take off running and never come back.

It’s T-minus five minutes from when Eddie typically gets home from work, and Richie wonders if that’s enough time to spontaneously die. He’s sitting on the couch with Penny in his lap, just waiting like a moron. He should’ve made a plan. He should’ve figured out something epic and romantic. He should reschedule his less-than-grand gesture, but he knows the second he sees Eddie’s face it’s all going to come pouring out of him.

Maybe it's not the kind of moment every queer boy dreams about, but it’s enough, right? Because it’s them — it’s Richie and Eddie — and they love each other. It doesn’t matter if it’s a random Wednesday, or if Richie’s wearing a shirt with a rooster dick joke on it. As long as they’re together, it’s perfect.

Eddie steps into his apartment, and a smile of shock and surprise breaks across his face. His suit jacket is off, draped over his forearm, and his tie is hanging loose around his neck. He looks tired and soft, and it’s everything that makes Richie want to melt into the floor and ooze over into his strong, perfect arms.

“What are you doing over here, you creep?” Eddie deposits his suit jacket and briefcase on a chair before making his way over to Richie. His brow furrows deeper the closer he gets, until his face is creased in tragedy as he stands directly in front of where Richie is sinking into the couch. “What’s wrong?”

“Eds, I…” The rest of the words get lodged in his throat. He works his mouth, but no sound comes out. It’s like all those nightmares he’s had where someone turns his volume down, and no matter how hard he screams no one ever hears.

Then Eddie sits down carefully beside him and cups his hideously pale and sweating cheek in his hand. He leans in and presses his lips to Richie’s, even though he looks and probably smells sickly and awful and infectious. And he’d refused to even let Bill into his apartment when he’d started sniffling from seasonal allergies this fall.

“It’s okay, Richie,” Eddie says so intimately quiet that it makes Richie’s shiver all the way down to his toes. “You can talk to me.”

Richie slides down onto his knees on the floor, holding both of Eddie’s hands in his. His heart is pounding so fast it’s going to crack his ribs. “I want you to be my FDR.”

“What?” Eddie blinks, so genuinely confused that Richie falls in love with him all over again. “Is this a riddle?”

"Franklin Delano Roosevelt. ‘Cause he— It doesn’t matter. But I… I want to spend a dozen years with you trying to cure my imaginary scurvy. I want to spend a dozen more arguing in the street, and having crazy sex that breaks my body, and listening to all your opinions because you’re always right. If I somehow manage to make it past sixty, then I want to spend those years with you, too.”

Eddie’s jaw falls open like the hinges gave out. “Richie…”

“Eddie. I want to be with a man who loves that I like being the little spoon, and who laughs at all my worst jokes and none of my good ones. You’re the guy who always knows exactly what I’m thinking, even before my own stupid brain can figure it out. You’re my best friend, and I- Wait. Fuck.” Richie fumbles around in his pocket for the ring. He whips it out, white gold and gleaming in the lamplight. “Marry me.”

A terrible rattling wheeze punches its way out of Eddie’s chest. “You’re joking.”

“What? No. Of course not.” Richie takes Eddie’s hand to slip the ring on his finger, but Eddie pulls away like it’s a noose around his throat. “Eds?”

“This can’t be happening.” Eddie’s chest heaves, like he’s on the brink of a panic attack. “This is… This is just some bad dream.”

“Bad…?”

Eddie jumps to his feet and begins to pace the room. Richie rises, too, if only to avoid looking like an asshole still curled up on the floor. But Eddie doesn’t look at him. It seems like his eyes are willing to land on anything _but_ him.

“Jesus. What were you thinking, Richie?”

It feels like he’s eight miles under water. Drowning and imploding from the pressure. “Um. I feel like my speech outlined my thought process pretty well. So.”

Eddie’s eyes snap to his then, and the wild, crazed look in them is worse than being ignored. “Do you ever listen to a single fucking word that comes out of my mouth? I told you I need to take things slow.”

“I- Well- I just- Okay. I mean, the sex yesterday—”

“You proposed to me because of _sex_?”

“No!” The daggers Eddie’s glaring slice him to pieces. “I mean yes, but no. It’s just, when we were together like that, everything suddenly made sense.”

Eddie’s hands extend between them, like if they were any closer Richie would be getting strangled. “We were on enough drugs to topple an elephant!”

Richie risks life and limb by stepping forward and pressing their hands palm to palm, fingers laced tight. “Eddie. Do you love me?”

“You know I do,” Eddie says on a tired sigh.

“Then marry me. Be my husband. Make me the happiest man alive.”

Eddie’s fingers squeeze like a vice. “Are you saying you’re not happy like we are?"

“No, that’s not it at all.” Richie’s heart sinks to his toes and through all five floors and nestles down into the core of the earth. “Are you saying you wouldn’t be happy being married to me?”

With all the tender, gentle care in the world, Eddie leans in and drops kisses to the first three knuckles of Richie’s left hand. “I don’t believe in marriage, Rich.”

Richie’s hands untangle from Eddie’s to fall at his side. “You did it once before.”

“Uh, yeah.” He looks at him sharply, like he’s an idiot and he means it this time. “To prove I wasn’t gay. Pretty much just proved that marriage is a bunch of bullshit.”

Richie brings a hand up to his own face so fast he almost smacks his glasses clear off. “So you… You just weren’t going to tell me that this whole fucking thing was going nowhere?”

“Why does it have to go anywhere?” Eddie throws his arms out at his sides, the volume of his voice raising dangerously close to yelling. “What’s so wrong with here? Why isn’t here good enough for you?”

“It’s good for now,” Richie says, surprised he can get the words out around the vomit slowly crawling up his throat. “But I want to have a later. I was looking forward to a long, happy later.”

“Take it one day at a time, Richie. You’re not some greedy kid in a candy store.”

Richie rears back, temper flaring like he can’t remember it doing in a very long time. “Greedy? Fucking greedy, Eddie? Stop making me out to be some lunatic for loving you!”

“Well stop pretending I don’t love you just because I’m not acting like an impulsive child!”

Richie scoops the little ring band off the coffee table where he left it and throws it hard toward the kitchen. It clinks and clatters and he doesn’t pay attention to where it lands. “I’m being a rational fucking adult for the first time in my entire life!”

“Yeah, it really looks like that right now.”

“I’m normal!” Richie screams at the top of his lungs, like he’s battering at the stark white padded walls of a crazy house. “Look at our friends! Bill and Stan are getting married. Bev and Ben are having a goddamn kid.”

Eddie rolls his eyes so hard he must be in danger of dislocating them from their sockets. “It’s not a competition.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, either. To build a life with me.”

“I’m not ashamed,” Eddie insists hotly. His face is growing pinker by the second, but Richie’s not sure if he wants to find out if it’s from embarrassment, frustration, or rage. “And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t ascribe my trauma to every goddamn argument we have.”

“I wasn’t—”

Eddie jerks his hand up, sharply cutting Richie off. “I spent my entire life being something I’m not for the sake of other people. I’m not going to do that again just because it’s for you.”

“Eddie…” Richie presses a palm to his own stomach as he feels it churn. His anger crumbles away into guilt, fear, and shame. 

“Now, I’ve already asked you once not to push me into these kinds of corners. And maybe when I asked I didn’t do it in the way I should’ve. But I explained it to you later, didn’t I? And if we got a little distracted with other things, sure, that’s both our faults. So here I am, right now, plainly and calmly telling you: I can’t be more than I am.”

“Ed—”

“Let me finish.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t know how to look toward the future right now, because it was hard enough getting to where I am. I love you. I love being with you. I don’t know what that means tomorrow, or next week, or next year. And I’m sorry that it’s hard for you, but if you’re a million and one steps ahead of me, then I need to be the one to set the pace, or I’m going to end up digging myself a brand new hole to die in. Can you understand that?”

Richie can. That’s not the part he has trouble with. It’s his own feelings he doesn’t know how to understand. The desperate, hungry clawing at his insides that tell him to speed on ahead. Like the breaks were cut. Like he’s been thrown out of a plane with no parachute.

“I don’t know how not to want the things that I want.”

Eddie’s eyes squeeze shut, and his entire face crumples like a crowbar to glass. “I need you to leave.”

Every single cell in Richie’s body goes ice cold. “Eddie, wait.”

“I think we need a break.” His eyes snap open, so sad and so resolved. “A little… A little pause. To just. Just. Figure ourselves out.”

“A break?”

Eddie tries to give him a reassuring smile, but it just highlights the fact that tears are welling up in his eyes. “An intermission.” His forced laugh sounds more like a sob. “Time away from each other.”

—————————————————

Richie had a girlfriend once, when he was sixteen and curious. Her name was Grace, and she was pushy and opinionated, ‘cause that’s the sort of thing Richie liked even if he never wanted to fuck her. They held hands, and Richie blew all his pocket change on movies and ice cream. Sometimes when Richie was feeling really brave, he’d lean in and give her dry, tight-lipped kisses.

One time three months into it, Grace tried to stick her tongue in his mouth, which was not nearly as bad as the simultaneous move to get her hand down his pants. Richie flew across the room with more terror than if he had been groped by a swarm of killer bees. Grace had just sighed and said that she thought they needed to take a break.

The next morning at school, Richie saw Grace by the flag pole with a senior’s hand up her shirt.

When he was twenty-two, Richie was hooking up with this guy, Jonathan. Jonathan was smaller than him, because most people are, but stronger — because that’s apparently something Richie _also_ likes. But he didn’t have the wiry, compact strength that Eddie carries. It was all bulky biceps and tree trunk thighs.

He was the bossiest bottom Richie would ever meet, and that worked out fine for both of them. They had sex whenever they were free on weekends. Richie had been counting while Jonathan surely hadn’t been, so he knows it lasted seven and a half months before Jonathan said anything. Before Jonathan noticed that Richie was getting too attached, making something serious out of a casual thing. Before he suggested that they take a break.

Richie waited patiently for an excruciating two weeks before trying to cut through the radio silence, but Jonathan never answered his phone.

And of course there was the closeted actor Richie had had a whirlwind romance with when he was twenty-seven. Tristan was what Richie called “nervous” at the time, and what he would refer to now as “cowardly.” Nothing like Eddie in the slightest, except for his big brown eyes.

Richie was happy sneaking around with him for four months — slipping into his apartment at three in the morning and leaving before sunrise, ignoring each other at public events, and rarely taking all their clothes off when they had sex. The two months after that, Richie had begged Tristan to consider coming out if he wanted to be together. Tristan had said that the request was unfair. That it was too much pressure. That it couldn’t come at a worse time. But he would think about it.

Tristan insisted that they take a break so he could figure out how to proceed. Richie hadn’t even made it back to his own apartment before he received a phone call from a lawyer offering him a hefty monetary settlement if he never spoke to or about Tristan ever again. Richie refused the money, but he played by their rules.

So it’s safe to say that Richie is very well-versed in what taking a break actually means.

—————————————————

Richie’s next thirty-three hours go like this:

He walks back to his apartment in a dazed sort of state. His legs feel hollow and his brain fills with a static white noise. It feels like his body has been standing in negative twenty degree weather — like he’s going into hypothermic shock.

This is his body’s defense system against bad news: the brief lapse of emotional dawning where he can reasonably organize his thoughts before the panic sets in. Unfortunately, Richie finds he has no patience for reason and organization. And he certainly has no desire for the fuzzy, soft space his brain is floating in to dissolve away to the cold, hard reality of his ruined life.

So he does what he does in the face of every problem he can’t bear — he digs around in his cabinets for alcohol.

He cracks open a full bottle of bourbon and drains it himself over the course of four hours. It’s not the most he’s ever had, but it’s the most he’s ever had alone. But he’s feeling good. He’s disoriented enough that every handful of minutes or so he forgets why he started drinking in the first place.

He twists off the cap to a bottle of top shelf whiskey his agent gave him to celebrate the success of his last Netflix special. Luckily for his liver, he only gets halfway through this bottle before he passes out some time around midnight.

Since he lost consciousness twisted up on his couch, he wakes up with the sun. It’s late October, so it must be some ungodly time between seven and eight, and the beams of light streaming in through his flimsy curtains seem to have been specifically designed to slice through his eyeballs. It feels like someone took every one of his vertebrae between their fingers and popped them like bubblewrap. On top of it all, his head is throbbing and his organs feel like they’ve liquified.

He slithers off the couch and takes a step toward the kitchen to grab some water, but he abruptly halts in his tracks. On the floor by the front door sits the wedding band he’d wanted nothing more than to give to Eddie. Last he saw it, it was skittering around Eddie’s kitchen tiles. He must have found it and slipped it under the crack of the door while Richie was sleeping.

Apparently he couldn’t even return it in person. Couldn’t stomach looking at Richie. Couldn’t stand to spend one more second breathing the same air.

Richie leaves the ring on the floor and promptly empties his stomach in the kitchen sink. He washes his mouth out from the faucet before finishing the rest of his whiskey.

It’s not even lunchtime when Richie throws himself down on the fire escape. He’s just wearing a thin t-shirt and raggedy jeans, and the cold of the metal stings against his skin. The alcohol is slowly warming him up, but he’s still shaking. He looks down below at all the cars speeding by, and for the briefest second he thinks: what if?

What if he jumped? Or rolled himself off the edge? Or, hell, what if the wobbly metal platform just gave out beneath him and he plummeted to the ground?

He doesn’t want to kill himself, exactly. He just wants life to take a hard reset. He wants a break.

A loud, manic laugh bursts through his lips. He laughs ’til it hurts. ’Til he cries.

Stan would be so mad at him if he died. Whether he’s breathing or not, he doesn’t think he could stand that. And the others would be so upset. It wouldn’t be fair to someone like Bev, and it’s probably illegal to make a guy like Mike sad.

Richie drags himself inside and finds an old, shitty bottle of champagne. Champagne makes him nauseous, but it’s all he has left. He forces himself to swallow every last drop, chasing the feeling of not quite wanting to be dead and not quite thinking about Eddie.

Around four o’clock he dresses himself with very little coordination. God knows what he’s wearing — he barely pays attention when he’s sober. Leaving the house puts him at risk for getting splashed across the front page of gossip rags for going on a drunken bender, but he’s out of booze. So. Bar it is.

It’s not hard to find a bar in New York City that doesn’t care how trashed you already are. Richie picks a small hole in the wall that walks the careful line between a clientele that won’t make a big scene if they recognize him and a crowd that won’t punch him in the nose for the more suggestive things that come out of his mouth when he’s intoxicated. His only two goals for the night are to avoid getting murdered and to avoid another TMZ article.

The bartender doesn’t cut Richie off, but she makes him wait long stretches of time before acknowledging his requests for a refill. He doesn’t know if he appreciates or resents her efforts. Since bars don’t like to keep clocks on the wall, he doesn’t know what time it is anymore, either. But it’s dark out and Richie is starting to lose steam.

This is when a cute little thing — early twenties, short and slender, with sharp, masculine features and wide blue eyes — perches on the stool next to him. Richie normally wouldn’t give a shit. He barely gives a shit now. But the kid is excited enough to see him. Recognizes him in an unobtrusive way. Flirts a little. Teases a little. Flashes a little bag of pills and nods toward the bathroom.

Richie follows him, curious and desperate and left with what feels like nothing to lose. Turns out the little baggie is full of Adderall. And shit, Richie’s parents spent enough time in his youth trying to shove Ritalin down his throat, so snorting some crushed up alternative now couldn’t be so bad, right?

—————————————————

The pounding at his door comes close to three in the morning. It’s urgent and endless and scares the shit out of Richie. He flails out of bed and lands on the hard floor. He gropes for his glasses with a groan and stumbles dizzily toward the front entryway. 

He’s freezing, and it takes him most of the journey to realize it’s because he’s naked. He’d bypassed all the lights, and the lingering haze of alcohol is still making the room spin, so he grabs lazily for a throw pillow as he passes the couch. All of his friends have already seen him in various states of nudity — he’ll just congratulate his unexpected guest on scoring a free show.

But because it’s Richie, anything that _can_ go wrong _will_ go wrong, so when he throws open the door he finds Eddie there on the other side.

“Rich! Come on, Bev is—“

Eddie stops abruptly, eyes quadrupling in size as he realizes the only thing keeping him from an eyeful of Richie’s junk is the pillow held in front of his waist. As a matter of habit, his gaze rakes over the familiar skin bared in front of him. But his stare skitters to a halt on Richie’s chest, and his face goes chalky pale.

Richie glances down and feels his gut implode. His chest is covered in raised, screaming red claw marks, and one particularly vivid purple bite mark. “Oh fuck.”

Their eyes snap up to meet each other’s, and the mirrored shock there is too much for either of them to bear. They drop their gazes to the floor, which proves to be an even bigger mistake at the sight of the wedding band Richie had left there to rot.

Eddie exhales a shaky breath, wrapping his arms around himself as he tilts his face up toward the ceiling. “You’re… You’re not alone, I guess.”

“Eds, I—”

“Bev’s in labor,” he cuts him off quickly.

Richie’s heart hammers against his sternum. “Double fuck.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees weakly. The color is coming back to his face, concentrating in bright pink spots high along his cheeks. He still won’t look at Richie. “Get dressed. I hung back when you weren’t answering the phone. The others went ahead to meet her at the hospital.”

“Eddie—”

He looks at him then, expression hard and cold in a way that makes all of Richie’s words run dry. “Get dressed. I’ll be waiting in my car.” He turns his back on him then, but calls back in a sharp and scathing tone, “And get rid of the stranger in your bed, unless you’re counting on getting robbed.”

Richie springs into action, trying to concentrate on the time sensitive news of one of his best friends on Earth _giving fucking birth_. It’s just hard to focus when his brain keeps playing the image of Eddie catching him with his pants down on a loop. His body can’t settle on an emotion. He keeps cycling through excitement, and dread, and nerves, and depression, and odd flashes of mania in between. But that might be the lingering effects of the drugs…

He stumbles into a pair of boxers that probably aren’t clean, and the jeans he’s been wearing five days in a row. Tugging a stale-smelling henley over his head, Richie creeps over to the bed to wake up the stranger tangled up in his sheets.

“Hey…” He grasps for a name and comes up empty. “Uh, _buddy_.”

The guy from the bar blinks his eyes open slowly, and Christ, as Richie’s eyes adjust to the dark of his own room he just looks even younger than he remembers. He feels like all those pathetic assholes that go through a mid-life crisis. “I’ve got an, uh, emergency. Which sounds like a dickhead excuse to kick you out, but—”

“It’s fine,” the kid laughs. Or the adult. The legal adult who is still far too young for Richie to think back on this with any amount of dignity. “I didn’t mean to crash anyway.”

“Ah. Well. Good news all around.”

Richie shuffles into his Vans while his house guest hops into clothes quicker than the Flash. Richie figures he’s either still on a boatload of drugs, or very used to a speedy walk of shame. Neither make him feel any better.

They walk outside together, and Richie can feel the suffocating weight of Eddie’s glare from where he’s sitting in his car out front. The twisting in his gut reminds him of all those long walks to the principal’s office — he had never been afraid of the cartoonish anger from Principal Thornby, but rather wracked with guilt over the inevitable look of disappointment and defeat on his mother’s face. Maybe it’s better that Eddie is pissed off rather than resigned.

Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore, anyway.

Richie gives his partner in crime a weak little wave. “Uh. Thanks for the… You know. See you later… buddy.”

“Tyler,” the man-child laughs. He sashays forward and pecks Richie on the lips with an impish little grin, like he knows it’s only going to get him in more trouble, and that’s likely why he did it in the first place. “Good luck.” 

“I’m gonna fucking need it.”

Like diving head first into a war zone, Richie carefully slips into the passenger seat. Tension stretches taut between him and Eddie, and when the door shuts behind him it feels like a pin is pulled from a grenade. Richie really wishes he knew when he lost complete control over his own life.

Eddie gives him a quick appraising once-over before pulling out onto the street. “Are you fucked up?”

“As a person? I mean, probably. But back when I was going to therapy she said not to—”

“I meant drunk,” Eddie snaps impatiently. “Or stoned. Are you on something?”

Richie blinks, trying to formulate the right answer. Because it definitely feels like there’s a _wrong_ answer. But he’s never been good at telling people what they want to hear. He does better with shock value and evasion. Usually, all of his problems can be solved with a few good chucks.

“I—”

“Don’t say something dumb,” Eddie says tiredly, swiping a hand down his face at a red light. “Just be honest.”

Richie swallows, even though it feels like he’s been gargling sand. “I was. A little. But. Um. Not anymore, I don’t think.”

Eddie nods slowly, tapping an irritated rhythm against the steering wheel. “Okay. That’s something, at least. Even though you’re still a huge fucking dickhead. Of like, incomprehensible proportions.”

“ _What_?” Richie balks, because really, hasn’t Eddie wounded his pride enough? “Why am I a dickhead?”

“I swear to god, Rich.” Eddie pauses, like the casual, intimate shortening of his name makes him queasy. “ _Richie_. If you spout some playing dumb bullshit I’m going to swerve us into oncoming traffic.”

“I’m not playing dumb, Eds.” And maybe his use of the nickname is pointed. Maybe he feels a shameful satisfaction at the flinch he gets in response. Maybe he gets the smallest, pettiest thrill out of the fact that he has the power to hurt, too. “I have no idea what you’re bitching about. So just go ahead and treat me like I’m actually fucking dumb, because I know you’re just jumping at the chance.”

Eddie slams a palm against the wheel, and even though the speedometer kicks up a few notches, he never takes his eyes off the road. “You’ve got some fucking nerve getting short with me like that, asshole.”

“Well excuse me, but I’m not going to sit here and say ‘yes sir, no sir’ after you broke my fucking heart.”

“I broke _your_ heart?!” Eddie tears his eyes away from the road this time, swerving a bit on the mostly empty backroads. “Literally go fuck yourself straight to hell, Richard. I walked in on the aftermath of you cheating on me with some vampiristic little twink!”

Richie’s mouth flaps soundlessly for a handful of seconds. “Cheating…? How could I have cheated on you if you already broke up with me?”

“I didn't break up with you!” The car picks up another few miles per hour. “I said we were on a break!”

“That’s the same fucking thing!” Richie jerks forward quick enough that the seatbelt locks across his chest. “The word ‘break’ is literally in the phrase ‘break up!’”

Eddie’s got a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel as he takes a corner too sharply. “‘Break’ is in a lot of fucking phrases, Richie. ‘Break dance.’ ‘Tax break.’ ‘Break the fucking ice.’ None of those phrases imply our relationship is over!”

A dizzying sense of hysteria settles in over Richie. “Well how the hell was I supposed to know that?”

“I don’t know, maybe you could have waited more than a day to stick your dick in the first homo you ran into!” 

Burying his face in his hands, Richie throws his body weight against the door. His head thunks painfully against the window. “Well, where the fuck do we go from here?”

“To the hospital,” Eddie says short and clipped.

“I didn’t mean literally.”

“I know what you meant.” His voice comes out hardened and distant. “But right now one of our best friends is having a baby, and I… This is too much. All of it. I can’t celebrate a new life at the same my own shitty existence is slam dunking into the toilet. So you and I… We’re going to shut up and focus on this fucking baby. Alright?”

Richie nods, feeling outside of his body. What the hell has he done? What the hell is he _doing_? “Sure. Whatever you say, Eds.”

“Don’t call me that.”

And Richie thinks that, for the first time, he probably means it.

—————————————————

The waiting room is chaos, even before Richie and Eddie arrive. Bill is pacing the floor, gnawing on the side of his thumb. Stan is sitting, but he’s too still, like he’s putting all of his concentration into playing a statue. Sarah brought a tin full of those cookies she likes to bake, but she’s methodically shoving them into her own mouth. Mike is the only one who looks halfway normal, but when Richie gets close enough he can see he’s dripping with a nervous sweat.

“What the fuck is wrong with you guys?” Richie gently pushes Bill down into a chair and snatches a cookie from Sarah as he takes his own seat. “Did the baby pop out looking like Bill?”

The four of them laugh weakly, but relief visibly washes over them. Richie may not be good at solving his own problems, but he provides a hell of a distraction. And he loves it — being the balm that soothes all of his friends. Bill does it with his blind determination. Bev does it with her guileless courage. Stan does it with his raw honesty and simple logic. Ben with his overflowing compassion, and Mike with his unshakable belief. Eddie with his fussy care taking.

But Richie gets to make people laugh. It’s better than all the drugs in the world.

Eddie, however, isn’t laughing. He takes the seat farthest from Richie and stares blankly ahead. Perhaps cracking jokes about cheating — no matter how ridiculous — is in poor form right now.

Stan takes Bill’s hand and tips his head over to rest on Richie’s shoulder. “Things are apparently moving pretty quickly. Last we heard, Bev was almost through labor, but it’ll take a couple hours after for her to recover enough to have visitors.”

Richie rests his temple against the top of Stan’s head, feeling grounded for the first time tonight. “Good. Good for Bev. I was born really quick, too, you know.”

“Yeah?” Sarah prompts, starting to pass her cookies around the group.

“Yeah. My mom barely made it to the hospital. I popped right out. I guess I didn’t want to hang around a vagina any longer than I had to.”

The others titter with more laughter, but Eddie remains stone-faced. It grates on Richie, not getting a reaction. He shouldn’t expect the attention, now of all times. He knows that. He just also knows that the less attention he receives from the object of his affections, the more his stupid brain is going to lash out to get it.

Richie stands up too fast, jostling Stan. “Anybody wanna go for a…” He trails off, realizing his typical partner in crime is in the middle of pushing a kid out. “Smoke. Guess not.” He laughs awkwardly, palming the back of his neck. “I’ll… I’ll be back, I guess.”

Even on a good day, Richie would consider himself a pretty heavy smoker. On a day like today, his habits could make a chainsmoker cringe. He doesn’t go outside and smoke like a chimney, he smokes like a god damn forest fire. He’s lucky he bought an extra pack yesterday.

He’s apparently out there long enough that Bill takes it upon himself to set out on a rescue mission. He pops his head out of the automatic doors and gives Richie a tired smile before traipsing over to his heap of cigarette butts in the parking lot.

“Hey, man. Word is we get to visit soon.”

“Shit, that kid really did just fly right out of her.” He catches Bill eyeing his half-burnt cigarette with a sense of yearning and huffs a laugh. “Want one?”

Bill grimaces, picking at the raw skin of the thumb he’d been chewing on. “Nah, but thanks. Stan would rip me a new one. Honestly, I don’t know how Eddie of all people lets you get away with it.”

Bitter bile rises in the back of Richie’s throat. He tosses the cigarette to the ground and stubs it out under his heel. “Yeah. Well. Eds is pretty good at bowing out of a losing battle.”

Bill doesn’t catch the edge in his voice. Maybe he’s too keyed up to pick up on much of anything right now. Maybe Richie has just gotten too good at hiding, even when he’s not trying to. Either way, they head inside.

Richie falls into line as they follow a nurse through the obstetric halls. Everyone is buzzing with excitement, except Eddie, who devastates Richie with a judgmental side-eye. “You smell fucking terrible.”

“Thank you,” Richie blandly replies. “I blew through most of my pack outside. My mouth tastes like I tongue-fucked Smokey Bear.”

“Smokey _prevents_ fires, asshole.”

“Fine. Then it tastes like I did a scenic tongue tour of the devil’s taint.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but Richie’s heart quivers at the barely there smile that twitches at his lips against his own will. “And that baby is gonna barf all over you if you go in there smelling like Chernobyl.”

“I’ll steer clear, I guess.”

“You’ve been yapping about holding that baby for months.” Eddie heaves a sigh and shrugs out of his hoodie, which — now that Richie’s paying attention — is obviously an item from Richie’s closet. “Here. Change into this and wash your hands.”

“I… Thanks.”

Eddie doesn’t respond. Just trudges ahead with the rest of them while Richie wanders off toward the bathroom.

—————————————————

When Richie walks into Bev’s hospital room, his heart stops in his chest. Stan is holding the baby, grinning like a fool as he looks down at the wrinkly, pink-faced little girl. And newborns, they look weird. Like little goblins, or something.

“Holy shit,” Richie breathes. “She’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Bev's tired eyes light up, and Ben beams like the moment he’s living right now is the proudest he’ll ever be. Fair enough.

“Her name is Emily,” Ben says, practically glowing.

“Emily Marie Hanscom,” Bev grins, lacing her fingers through Ben’s. “And you’re all her godparents, so have fun working that one out if we die.”

“Dibs,” Bill says quickly, draping himself over Stan’s back to look down at Emily. “Finders keepers.”

Stan gently traces the pad of his finger down the squidgy slope of Emily’s nose. “I want seven of them.”

Bill huffs a laugh, brushing his palm over the barely there hair atop the baby’s head. “Make it eight and you’ve got a deal.”

Richie very carefully avoids looking at Eddie. The only thing that balances out the weight of his family growing is the weight of his heart slowly disintegrating in his chest. This whole scene reads like a tableau of irony. Richie is where he’s always wanted to be, with none of what he actually wants.

Something occurs to him then, sudden and achingly clear.

A few months ago, Eddie had told him about a conversation he’d had with Bev in a bathroom. They’d talked about abusers, and how the hold they had had over them made it feel like their whole lives were passing them by. How everything they wanted felt out of reach because the person that was supposed to love them did it in all the wrong ways.

Richie’s never been married to someone like that. He wasn’t even _raised_ by someone like that. He’s experienced violence, of course — both of the physical and emotional varieties. It was heaped on to him by scared little boys, greedy old men, and everyone else in between who thought that his life was somehow any of their business.

Homophobia isn’t something to scoff at. It’s insidious and, at times, it feels unshakeable. It’s a hatred that has battered so hard at Richie’s skin that it has squeezed in between the atoms to spread through his bloodstream like poison. It started off small, with the thought that maybe being gay was the thing that’s wrong with him. But after it hacked it’s way to the center, it made him wonder if there was anything right with him to start with.

There’s no snarling dragon that keeps Richie in a castle night after night. There’s just the layers of stone built up by years of people who refused to take him as he was. But maybe, just maybe, the only person who keeps him from getting the things he wants anymore is himself.

All those nights he spent worrying that he might one day grow into the kind of person that loved Eddie the wrong way? He should have spent them thinking about all the ways he refused to show himself love. Because there’s no living thing that Richie mistreats more than his own heart. Somewhere down the line — a long, long time ago, or every dawning day — he forgot his own worth.

Richie steps forward, and Stan slips the baby over into his arms. She’s a beautiful blank slate. A terrifyingly unformed thing. He thinks of all the things the people in this room have to offer her — all the wonderful strengths that she’ll carry with her through life. He thinks of all the awful things that exist outside these walls, and of all the things he’s willing to do to keep them from her.

“It’s nice to meet you, Emily,” he whispers. “I’m Richie. You’re pretty lucky to have all these losers in your corner, but, uh… I think we’re pretty lucky to have you, too.”

A careful hand cups Richie’s elbow, and when he turns to see Eddie his eyebrows migrate north in shock. “Can I…? I mean, if it’s alright, I’d like to…”

“Oh. Of course. Sure!”

Richie passes Emily over, and with the scrunchy-faced infant in his arms, Eddie looks dumb-struck. “Well,” his voice is gravelly with sudden emotion. “Hi there. I think… I think I love you a million times more quickly and deeply than I actually thought I could.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Bill whispers. “I want nine.”

Eddie’s eyes flicker upward to meet Richie’s gaze, and it’s like someone’s pulled the trigger of a gun pressed flush against Richie’s chest. Similar to the myths about dying, Richie’s life — his life with _Eddie_ — flashes before his eyes. Fragments of the best days of his life. All those times that Eddie’s nose scrunched up as he shouted out a full-body laugh. The way he’d drag his nose across the line of Richie’s jaw as he wrapped around him to sleep. Their hands swinging between them as they strolled down the street.

Richie knows, now more than ever, that with or without all the golden trappings of a marriage or children, Eddie is all that he really wants. And he knows that he can’t have him.

From the look in Eddie’s eyes, he knows that, too.

—————————————————

The ride back home is quieter than the trip to the hospital, but it lacks the needling edge of tension. The air is just heavy with that resignation Richie had been so scared of.

When they arrive back at their building, the elevator ride up to the fifth floor feels like it takes a lifetime. But when Richie steps forward to enter his apartment, Eddie doesn’t continue on past him to 5C. Feeling both like a chump with the barrel of a gun pressed to his back and a fool running through the airport for his last chance to win back his rom-com lover, Richie holds the door open for Eddie to follow him inside.

As he steps over the threshold, Eddie crouches down to gingerly scoop up the abandoned wedding band. He stares at it a moment before turning and seeing the upturned velvet jewelry box on the book shelf. Like tip-toeing across broken glass, he makes his way over to safely tuck the ring away in its rightful place. He snaps the box shut and nestles it between a tipped over copy of _Good Omens_ and a collection of essays by David Sedaris.

His lips purse a little, and Richie knows that he’s thinking about the disorganization of Richie’s books. They’ve had soft squabbles about this before, too. Eddie complaining that no man alive could ever find what they’re looking for amidst shelves with no coherent organizational system. But Richie could always find what he wanted — knew where every book belonged in the rows of chaos.

That Eddie is bothered about this one simple thing, even now… Richie aches with love for him.

“So…” Richie’s voice comes out so weakly he has to clear his throat and try again. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

Eddie whips around to face him, eyes wild and desperate. “Do you wanna know why I’m angry?”

“I feel like I have a few good guesses rattling around in my brain, but shoot.”

“After doing something only mildly stupid, you proceeded to do something _monumentally_ stupid — which, I mean, that’s not unheard of for either of us. It’s like when we’re together, our minds shrivel down to a single malfunctioning brain cell.”

Richie can’t help a quiet huff of a laugh. “That sounds apt.”

“Yeah. We’re dipshits. And that’s… I mean I was fine with that. I kind of liked it. It was like we spoke our own language of stupidity, but now…” Eddie trails off for a moment to bury his face in his hands. When he looks back up, the wild look is replaced with devastation. “A terrible fucking thing happened between us, and I feel worse than I’ve maybe ever felt. And I’m so, so angry because the only person I ever want to talk to when I feel bad is you. But now I can’t.”

“Eddie—”

“And the thing is,” he continues like a runaway train. “We weren’t really talking about things before tonight, were we? That’s the real fucking problem. Because you could have talked to me before you fucked some random guy. You could have talked to me before you took a manic leap into proposing. And I… I could have talked to you about all the crazy shit in my head. But we didn’t.”

Richie shakes his head, feeling the throat-clogging sting of tears. “No. We didn’t.”

Eddie strides forward and bridges the brutal distance between them. He frames Richie’s face in his hands, eyes glistening with his own tears. “I don’t know why I can whole-heartedly trust you with my life, but I still can’t trust you with parts of my heart.”

“I don’t know why I don’t know how to be happy unless I have all of you.”

With a soft, tender look, Eddie brushes his thumb along Richie’s cheekbone. “Stop me if this sounds crazy, but I love you too much to stay in this if I’m just going to resent you for what you can’t do.”

“Took the words right out of my mouth.” The tears roll over, falling down Richie’s cheeks to pool between Eddie’s fingers. “This is a break up, right? Not one of those ambiguous breaks?”

“Beep beep, Richie."

“Sorry.” Richie leans into the palms pressing against his cheeks and raises his hands to curl around Eddie’s wrists. He squeezes once, tentatively. “You know you can still talk to me, right? Even if it’s just a list of all the things you think I did wrong. I don’t need to be sucking your dick to care what you have to say, you know?”

Eddie drops his hands down to Richie’s shoulders, toeing forward to press his forehead to the taller man’s clavicle. “I know that. I’d like that. And I want you to know that you can always talk to me, too.”

Richie buries his face in Eddie’s soft hair, breathing in deep the scent of his fussy shampoo. “I wish it was enough that we loved each other. It’s not fair. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for that,” Eddie murmurs softly. He tips his face upward, so their cheeks press firmly together. It’s easier this way — being close, but not having to look each other in the eye. “I think in a situation like this, it’s not ultimately anyone’s fault.”

“I don’t know. I think maybe the healthy thing to do is admit we’re both the assholes. It’s both our faults.”

Eddie breathes a pained laugh. “Healthy? When did we start striving for that?”

“Now,” Richie says softly. He forces himself to step back from Eddie, because if he doesn’t let go now, he knows he never will. “We’ve got to, right? Because if we don’t, then we’re ending this for nothing.”

“You’re right,” Eddie agrees tiredly. “I just— Can I ask you a favor?”

“Anything.”

Eddie seems to smile at the response by reflex, but it’s a defeated little thing. “I don’t want to… I mean, if it’s alright with you, I’d like… Bev and Ben just had a kid, right? And we’re smack dab in the middle of Bill and Stan’s wedding bullshit. I just… Everyone’s stressed enough, and juggling a million things, and—”

“Eds,” Richie stops him, firm but kind. “I said anything. What is it?”

Eddie bites his lip, rubbing the skin raw and angry. “You can say no, Rich, but I just want a little time before we tell everyone about us… not being _us_. Just so I can figure out how to break the news right? I’ll man up before Bill and Stan’s wedding — I will. I just want to figure out how to do this without wrecking everything.”

Richie gets it. He really does. Because nothing sounds worse to him, either. If he could, he wouldn’t tell their friends at all. Avoid all the sympathy. The humiliation. The well-meaning nudges in a million different directions. The shrewd eye of Stanley, who knows exactly what happens to Richie when his heart is broken.

“Sure. Whatever you want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *****Warnings for: alcohol binging, suicidal ideation, drug use, and an instance which—though disputed—may be considered cheating*****
> 
> Heyyyyy guys. Before you come at me with those pitchforks, please peep that tag up there that says "Happy Endings for All Gays Forever." I love you all. There's a method to my madness.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *****For more specific warnings related to this chapter, please see the end notes.

The first few mornings after… _After_ , Richie wakes up forgetting that things have changed. It’s a slow dawning recollection as he stretches, starting every day off wrong.

But he can’t keep thinking like that. Can’t keep sinking into the hole he’s digging himself. They broke up for a reason. For the right reasons. So he has to drag himself out of bed, and brush his teeth, and face the world, because if he doesn’t keep pushing himself to be better, then he’ll only get worse.

And then he really will have nothing left.

Richie starts off small. He buys new sheets — a vibrant, bright red set of microfiber luxury sheets so different from the soft, broken in gray jersey set he spent so many nights in with Eddie. He wakes up, and the change jars him into reality. He knows that he slept alone, and that he’ll be waking up alone for many more chilly mornings to come.

But it’s fine — or at least marginally better — because the lingering scent of Eddie’s aftershave isn’t on his pillowcases. He only smells it nowadays when Eddie has to squeeze past him in the elevator.

He cleans up around the place, too. It wouldn’t be anywhere even remotely close to Eddie’s standards, but despite the fact that he’s all Richie can think about while he’s dusting the nooks and crannies of his bookshelves, it isn’t _for_ Eddie. Richie thinks he’s done a pretty damn good job, though.

It’s like a soft reset. Like as he brushes away the fingerprints in the dust that are too small to be his own, he brushes away the phantom touches that linger on the palms of hands, and slip across his lips, and press against his chest. It’s not like he wants to erase Eddie from his system — he just wants the looming, haunting ghost of what they used to be to ease its greedy grip.

The healing hasn’t really started yet, but setting his apartment right feels like he’s at least pulled out the jagged knife.

Life stutters on like usual.

It’s strange that the others don’t know how the rug was just completely yanked out from under Richie’s feet. They always know everything. A little too much, sometimes. Certainly more than they’d like to, on numerous occasions.

Richie’s whole life feels like it has shifted on its axis, and he feels like it must be obvious to anyone with a pair of working eyes. He gets it, though, that his friends don’t notice. Like actually gets it — not in the passive aggressive self-pitying way said in sighs and hang-dog looks. Bev and Ben are covered in baby poop and running on ten minutes of sleep. Stan and Bill are earning their place at the top of every wedding vendor’s hit list. Mike is…

Well, if Richie’s being honest, Mike has been a little odd the past couple of days. He can’t help but to notice, since falling into silence is the only thing to do if he wants to keep his motor mouth from filling every inch of space with his terrible, awful, no-good truth. And when Richie is quiet, he becomes observant.

It’s not like Mike has plunged into some sort of mid-life crisis by shaving his head and getting a trampy tattoo or impractical car. He’s just gotten more withdrawn. On a normal day he’s pretty reserved, but in a contemplative way. Nowadays… It feels like an aching silence. Like a sad zoo animal trapped behind a pane of splintered glass, weighing the pros and cons between staying put and bursting through.

But Richie could be projecting.

Then again, it’s not too far of a leap to imagine that maybe Mike feels just like Richie does — left behind in the mad dash to build a life with someone. He’s got no baby on the horizon, no ring burning a hole in his pocket. Sarah is kind of a free-spirit, no-planting-roots kind of woman, and Mike is the very definition of loyalty and devotion. The guy would probably wait in a patient vigil for eternity for Sarah to decide it’s time to settle down.

 _Maybe being lonely doesn’t have to be so bad_ , Richie thinks, _if I don’t have to do it alone_.

He nabs a six-pack of beer from the fridge and gears up to drop in across the hall and bro it up over some mutual Man Angst. But when he steps out of his front door he nearly runs directly into Beverly, who’s looking like a guilty raccoon caught rummaging through the trash with dark circles under her eyes, disheveled sweats hanging off her body, and a pack of cigarettes clutched in her hands like a lifeline.

“Why Ms. Marsh,” Richie starts in a high-society southern drawl. “Are young ladies allowed to be smoking when they’re breastfeeding?”

The carton crunches in her grip. “I dunno, Rich. We use formula.”

“Oh.”

She huffs, hair blowing around her face like the tufts of a dandelion. “Don’t mention it to Eddie, okay? He’d probably go on some rant about immuno-whatever.”

“I feel certain he’d rather get hit by a city bus than talk about your titties,” he says, just to watch the smile dance across Bev’s tight, tired expression. “But I’m also pretty sure he knows that shit’s none of his business.”

“Sorry,” Bev mutters, posture relaxing a bit. “I didn’t mean to jump down your throat. I just don’t remember what sleep feels like, and it seems like every person me and Ben talk to wants to lecture us about how we should be taking care of Emily.”

Richie lifts his arm, jiggling the flimsy cardboard full of bottles. “Would a beer help?”

“No. But _two_ beers would probably do the trick.”

They set up shop on the stoop of their building. In exchange for the beer, Bev passes Richie a cigarette. She lights it for him, too, laughing as he groans at the first rush of nicotine.

“That’s the good shit,” Richie sighs, leaning back against a palm. “Only thing that could make it better would be a big, fat, greasy pizza. I could relieve the glory days back when I thought all this was a square meal.”

Bev smiles around a sip of beer, the corners of her eyes crinkling up. “Do you ever miss being twenty — being able to do whatever you wanted without having anybody to answer to?”

The abruptness of the question makes him pause like a deer caught in headlights, the bottle lifted halfway to his mouth. He takes a slow, deep breath, forcing his muscles to unclench. “No. Not really.”

Beverly’s smile widens, and she looks suddenly younger then. By ten—fifteen—somehow twenty years. Bright and energetic and free. “Yeah, me neither. People like us, Rich... who woulda thought?”

Richie puffs a laugh through his nose, tapping the ash off the end of his cigarette. “We all knew you’d get your happily ever after, Beverly. You’re the kind of girl fairy tales are written for.”

“That so? You fancy me some kind of damsel?”

“Course not.” He knocks back the last of his beer and cracks open another. “You’re the dragon. Ben’s the pretty princess who helps you fight off all the shitty townspeople.”

Beverly laughs loud and clear, the sound bouncing off the towering buildings of the city to ring back in Richie’s ears. “Who are you, then? The jester?”

“Nah. I’m the ugly witch in the woods nobody listens to.”

She reaches out to tug softly at one of Richie’s curls in reprimand. “Bullshit. Let’s see… Eddie’s like.. Oh! He’s the sexy stable boy, and you’re—”

“The horse’s ass?”

Bev is bowled over by her amusement, leaning in to Richie’s shoulder as she wheezes. “You’re impossible. Whatever. But even a horse’s ass can have a happy ending.”

Richie clinks his beer against Bev’s in a noncommittal cheers. “Enough about me and my ass. When are you and your baby daddy gonna get hitched?”

“You sound like Ben’s mother,” Beverly mutters. “I don’t know. Eventually. Neither of us are going anywhere.”

“You’re so romantic. I don’t know how Ben stands it.”

She shoves him with her elbow. “My practicality balances us out. He’s proposed like nine times, you know?”

“No shit?” Richie drops his smoked down cigarette between his feet. “I don’t see a collection of diamonds on your fingers, so I assume you’ve been saying no.”

“Not _no_. Just _not right now_.”

Richie feels like his lungs have been flooded with cement — heavy and stiff and suffocating. “And that didn’t, like, crush him beyond recognition?”

“No,” she says slowly, looking at Richie like he’s a twelve-sided Rubik's cube. “He’s patient, and we understand each other. Both of us have been through a lot, and the kind of love we feel — it’s not the kind we have to prove to anyone. We both know we want a future together, and how fast we do the paperwork isn’t going to change that.”

Her words hit like the slow slide of a knife under his ribs. “Right.”

“Richie—”

“How long should you be leaving Mr. Handsome alone with your kid? Before you know it she’s gonna start building things, and that kind of butch influence can be a gateway drug for a young woman. I don’t know if our group dynamic can handle a lesbian.”

Bev glances down at her watch and seems to realize she’s dawdled longer than she planned. She looks up, staring back at Richie for a long moment before lightly patting his cheek with her palm. “Take care of yourself, Trashmouth. I mean it.” She scoops up her empty bottle. “Thanks for the hooch.”

Richie watches her disappear inside the building and wonders absently how he missed the day in school where they apparently taught you how to be a tolerable human being.

—————————————————

The worst of it comes a week later when they’re all gathered in Bev and Ben’s apartment. As has become tradition every time Richie churns out a new movie or stand-up, they’ve all gotten together to heckle and cheer. This time it’s for the Netflix special he filmed a couple months ago on his mini tour of the West Coast. This material is some of his best stuff — at least the stuff he’s proudest of — but considering the recent developments in his personal life, it hasn’t exactly aged well.

Richie takes a seat next to Ben on the couch, wasting no time in stealing Emily from his arms. She gives him something to focus on as Eddie sits down on the adjacent sofa in the seat closest to him. Near enough for appearances, but nothing resembling the way they used to be. Eddie cradles a generously poured glass of white wine between his palms, and Richie wishes he’d opted for booze, too, rather than the baby.

With a sluggish, creeping sense of dread — like pushing a car toward the train tracks with nothing but his own noodle arms and the will to die — Richie watches Ben scroll through the Netflix listings. He feels Eddie’s eyes burning a hole into the side of his face as the television screen boldly displays Richie’s ugly mug beside the title _Richie Tozier: Big Gay Love (Hang-Ups, Hair Loss, and Hand Jobs)_. Stan snorts, and Eddie chugs half his Sauvignon blanc.

It doesn’t take more than ten minutes for the bright-eyed, naively happy Richie on the screen to start in with, “ _So I’ve been seeing this guy_.” Real-time Richie’s heart takes a nose-dive. “ _And I mean that in the sense that I have a boyfriend, not in the sense that I’ve been having meth hallucinations, which I can only assume was your initial conclusion based on my general appearance_.”

The crowd on tv responds just as favorably as Richie remembers. Bill, Mike, Bev, Ben, and Stan chuckle. Eddie doesn’t.

“ _But yeah, I’ve been dating this man — an amazing man, really. Totally… Totally brilliant and funny and hot and everything you would look for in a partner. And see, I can see all of you thinking, ‘ **Oh, no. No, that doesn’t sound true.** ’ And I get it, because I am absolutely none of those things I just described to you, so it doesn’t really add up… Therein lies the problem, ladies and gentlemen._”

Eddie snatches the bottle of wine up from the side table and tops off his empty glass. Richie tucks his face against Emily’s soft, wispy baby hair, wishing he could dissolve into the couch cushions.

“ _The thing is, my boyfriend is basically the epitome of gay hotness. I mean it, I’m not just saying that because he’s the only man willing to put my dick in his mouth._ ” Eddie throws his wine back so fast he nearly chokes. “ _He’s kind of bitchy, which homosexuals like because we grew up getting gay-bashed and got some of our sexual wires crossed. And he’s got this perfectly sculpted little body. Abs, dude, which kind of offends me on, like, a base level. His ass was probably the inspiration behind the peach emoji, and his dick… Look, I don’t care what you believe in — God, an explosion in space — it doesn’t matter to me. But whatever was in charge of the creation of my boyfriend’s penis **optimized** that shit. I’m talking the kind of bulge you’d definitely look at if you were a stranger on the bus, but not to the point where you keep your doctor on speed dial if you’re about to fuck._”

On screen, Richie brings the microphone closer to his mouth, pitching his voice deep and intimate. “ _A lot of you in the audience tonight have probably seen **my** penis. So you know that’s one thing I have going for me. But everything else about me just happens to be everything that gay men reject. Seriously. However… I do **very** well with straight women_.”

On the couch, Richie passes Emily back over to Ben, because if he’s going to puke, he’d rather not do it on an infant. “ _For some fucked up inexplicable reason, straight women love disasters. I swear to god. The more a man looks like an alcoholic, the wetter they get. Women love fixing things. They **love** it. They see a guy in his mid-thirties with no savings account and a bottle of combination shampoo-conditioner in his shower, and they say, ‘Him. That’s the fucker I want to marry.’ It’s insane. My schlubby ass is like crack cocaine to straight women._”

“ _Unfortunately, I could never be with a woman. I like dick too much_.” Richie braces himself, because he knows what high-speed train is barreling down the track to ruin his life. He carefully turns his head so Eddie isn’t even in his peripheral vision. “ _But gay men, they have no time for fixer-uppers. They’re like, ‘Ew. No. God. Get this out of my face. I have a full body wax scheduled for two o’clock and an enema at three, I have no time to help this guy get his shit together. Life is hard enough. Fuck off.’ So I’m thinking I have a very limited amount of time before my boyfriend realizes he has better things to do than tell me I need to wash my sheets more than once a year, and he ditches me for someone like Anderson Cooper._ ”

“Fuck,” Eddie mutters soft, sharp, and heartfelt. Richie turns to look at him, seeing a wet drip of wine spilling down the corners of Eddie’s mouth where he must have spit it back out. “Shit. Sorry.”

Richie rises abruptly to his feet, feeling dizzy. “I… Bathroom,” he excuses himself, though no one asks or acknowledges him, as engrossed as they are in the personal hell unravelling on the screen.

He walks to the bathroom as fast as he can without drawing attention. He flips the lock and throws himself down in the bathtub, tugging the shower curtain shut to block out the outside world. Blood pounds in his ears, and an awful queasy feeling snakes from his stomach up through his chest, lingering in the back of his throat.

It’s been a long time since he’s had a panic attack like this. They used to slam into him like an eighteen-wheeler when he was a teenager — when he was curled up on top of a toilet in a bathroom stall at school, knees tucked against his chin, terrified that someone would see through him. Terrified that someone would see what he wanted, and how badly. Terrified at how easily the feelings that came naturally to him were twisted into a weapon by Bowers, and the shit-stains that scribbled hateful graffiti all over town, and even the sensationalist newspapers passed around to people just looking for an excuse to be disgusted.

His throat closes up — blocks out the air from his lungs like the low-sun afternoon he spent thrashing under the water of the quarry, thinking that was going to be the day he died. He remembers crawling out onto the dirt, dripping wet and trembling, hearing the echoing jeers of laughter from Bowers and Hockstetter and all the other assholes he tried to forget. He remembers all the awful things he said every day after — not about the bullies that dunked him under, but about himself. The corrosive words he slung because he thought that he could trick them into thinking he wasn’t a boy that loved boys. He tried to be a boy that didn’t love anything at all.

It’s been so long that Richie didn’t even know he still had a kernel of that shame buried deep inside his chest. And maybe it’s changed — shifted and mutated into something a hair less volatile. Evolved from _no one can know I’m a fag_ to _no one can know how weak he makes me_. He had thought he’d broken through the constraints of internalized homophobia, and all he’d really done is shrink it from a colossal wrecking ball down to a miniaturized dart he can fling at the object of his affections.

He feels a bit like a polar bear, skulking around the ice with a killer whale looming nearby to shred him to pieces. But the whale bared its vicious teeth, and like a coward he ran until he found himself on shakier ground. And just because his patch of ice broke away, drifting off to sea away from the salivating predator, it doesn’t mean he’s safe. The isolated distance from the problem brings its own dangers.

Hunger, and exposure, and the terrible ache of silence in the face of screams.

Maybe he’d quit therapy too soon.

And the jokes he’d spun on stage — the bits that had people laughing and laughing and laughing, the words he’d been so proud of for their honesty — they grew into a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, hadn’t they? And the honestly feels so shallow now. He’d poured all of his searingly bright love into Eddie, thinking it would shine enough to hide all of the fear rattling around inside of him. He’d barreled forward in confidence — a hubris bordering on downright arrogance — hoping that if he could nail Eddie in place now, he’d never have to be afraid again. He’d been so desperately certain, so self-deludingly reckless, that he’d stood in front of over a thousand people and multi-angle cameras, joking about Eddie leaving him like it was some kind of absurd impossibility.

But he _had_ left. Even if it’s not fair to frame it that way — even if they left each other. He’s not here, is he? And Richie’s all alone. Again.

It takes a long time for him to even out his breathing. An eternity that lasts maybe twenty minutes. He climbs out of the tub on baby-deer-legs and splashes his face with water from the sink.

 _Can’t let them know he makes me weak_ , his brain parrots. _That he’s gone. That anything that passes through my hands slips through my fingers_.

He strides out of the bathroom with his head held high and his shoulders pushed back. A horrifying excuse about bowel irregularities is on the tip of his tongue in case anybody asks, but no one does. Eddie’s dark eyes are on him as he slips back into his seat, but Richie plays the fool. He’s good at that.

He settles in just in time to hear his on-screen nightmare ramble on with, “ _It’s catastrophic. The only possible explanation for it is that my hairline recedes with every terrible decision I make. So with that in mind, allow me to tempt fate by starting my next story off with: My boyfriend was giving me a hand job the other day…_ ”

Richie tips his head back against the couch and stares up at the ceiling, knowing there’s another thirty minutes of excruciating self-indulgence left.

—————————————————

Richie is sprawled out on his living room floor, a notebook resting on his stomach. His glasses sit on the couch pillow next to his head, discarded in favor of blurring the world around him. He can’t bear to look down at those pages anymore — at the crossed out jokes he doesn’t have the heart to tell. Nothing comes out right, anymore.

What could he possibly say on stage that wouldn’t ooze out like a festering, neglected wound? Like hell he’s gonna stand under a spotlight and ramble on about single life, picking apart all the reasons he’ll inevitably die alone. He’s not going to dive into the agony of a break up, exposing all the increasingly creative ways he managed to fuck up the best thing he ever had.

He’s tired of being the butt of all of his own jokes.

A timid knock rattles at the door. He fumbles his glasses on and pinches the bridge of his nose, groaning, “Yeah? What? Come in.”

“Hi, Rich,” Eddie mutters softly, trudging shyly through the entryway.

Richie sits up so fast he pulls a muscle. He tries to act casual through pain-gritted teeth. “Eds? What’s up? You know you don’t have to knock, right? Even on the off chance my brain might function enough to lock the door, that’s what the key is for.”

“Oh, I…” He scratches nervously at the side of his neck, looking smaller than Richie has seen him in a while. “I just figured I maybe shouldn’t. I can give you the key back, too, if you want.”

Richie leans into the pinching pain in his lower back. “Nah. Keep it. For emergencies.”

Eddie’s dark brown eyes melt into something devastatingly soft. “You still trust me to be your emergency guy?”

“No one I trust more,” Richie shrugs. “Why? You, uh… You want me to give yours back?”

“No!” He says a little too quickly. His face flushes and he shuffles further into the room. “I mean, someone should have it, right?”

A lop-sided goner of a smile tweaks at Richie’s mouth without permission. “Whatever you say, Eds.”

Eddie frowns a bit at that. He lifts his hand and waves something in front of him that Richie can’t really make out through the frantic movements. “I found your spare glasses. In my fruit bowl, for whatever reason. I thought you might need them.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Richie forgets himself for a moment, moving to try and stand before the awful twinge in his back has him freezing mid-motion. He swallows back a squeak of agony, nodding toward the side table by the couch. “You can toss ‘em down.”

Eddie tilts his head, regarding Richie with an odd, indecipherable look. He pads forward and gently places the glasses down on the table before taking a perch on the arm of the couch. “Are you writing?”

“Trying to.”

“Oh!” Eddie hops back up to his feet. “I’m sorry. I can leave you to it.”

Richie reaches for him by instinct, hissing air through his teeth at another muscle twinge. He drops his arm before clarifying, “No, that’s not what I meant. It was going to shit before you got here. Stay.” He winces. “You can, I mean. If you want.”

Eddie sits back down, body set rigid like a nervous cat ready to spring at any sign of trouble. “Richie, about your new Netflix special—”

“I’m sorry,” Richie blurts, feeling a nauseatingly hot wave of shame burn him from scalp to toe.

“What?” Eddie’s posture loosens, caught off guard. “No, you don’t need to apologize. It was really funny. I’m proud of you. I just—”

“I know you don’t like being embarrassed. And I was _definitely_ embarrassed, too. I fucked up. And I’m an idiot. But if I had thought for one second you and I were gonna—”

“Can you let me talk for two seconds?” Eddie interrupts him in exasperation. “I’m trying to tell you that—”

“I think I wanna quit stand-up.”

Eddie falls abruptly silent, mouth hanging open. He slides down off the couch to sit cross-legged next to Richie on the floor. “I… What?”

Richie takes a deep, steadying breath. He feels weirdly confident in the decision, now that he’s voiced it. “I want to quit doing stand-up. At least for a while. There’s a lot of other things I could be doing. My movie career isn’t too bad, you know?”

“It’s not because of me, though, right? Because of what happened between us?”

Richie puffs a sad little breath of stilted amusement. “Nah. Not really. Not… entirely.” At Eddie’s wounded noise, Richie continues, “You ever notice that all I ever do is stand in front of people and say bad shit about myself? I didn’t even know it bothered me until I was watching myself say that stuff about you and me, and I realized that I… you know, I kinda believe all that junk.”

“I know you do,” Eddie says whisper soft, scooting closer across the floor. “I wish you didn’t.”

“I wish I didn’t either,” he drawls self-deprecatingly. “But playing my insecurities up for laughs certainly isn’t helping.”

“You might have a point,” Eddie concedes. “But I think you’ll be able to find your way back. To stand-up, I mean. You love that shit, Rich. And I think… Well, you know I think you’re funny no matter what you talk about. So I think when you remember the good stuff about yourself, you can find the funny in that, too.”

A sardonic grimace twists Richie’s features. “You say ‘ _remember_ ’ like I ever thought I had any good stuff.”

Eddie scoots the rest of the distance between them, hooking his chin over Richie’s shoulder as he pulls him into a hug. Richie molds against him, powering through the stabbing pain ripping at the muscles at the base of his spine.

He loves him. He hates that he loves him. He hates that every day apart only gets worse instead of better.

“Hey, what I was trying to say before…” Eddie pulls back a little, keeping his arm around Richie’s shoulders. “All that stuff you said in your special about me wising up and leaving you? It’s not like that. We didn’t break up because there was something about you that needed to be fixed. And if there was ever anything wrong in your life that I thought I could actually help with, I… Well. I’d never think that any second I spent helping you was a waste of my time.”

Richie clenches his jaw and swallows the lump growing in his throat like an inflating balloon. “I’m not trying to be an asshole here, Eds, really, but you do get how it kind of might not feel like that?”

“I do,” he says, sliding his arm off Richie’s shoulder so he can pick up one of his hands and lace their fingers. “But I’m here, aren’t I? Sitting on the floor like a toddler. Whether we’re dating or not. So if there’s anything I can do to help you, Rich, you just have to say it.”

The laugh starts in Richie’s belly, rattling like spare change inside a beggar’s mug. It snakes upward, growing along the way until it splutters past his lips like the splinters of a door on the wrong end of a confrontation with a battering ram.

“What?” Eddie asks in concern, eyes darting across Richie’s face in search of answers. “What is it?”

“I can’t get up,” Richie wheezes, because the ridiculousness of the situation has reached new heights. “My back.”

Eddie’s eyebrows tick up in realization. “Oh, Rich. Oh no.”

“It’s fine,” Richie lies through the pain, made worse by the shakes of his laughter. “I just need to deep throat a whole bottle of Aspirin.”

“No. No, you’re gonna get an ulcer if you do that. I got this.” Eddie props himself up on his knees and flutters his hands nervously over Richie. “Lay on your stomach.”

“Eds,” he starts hesitantly, off-put by the whole situation. At Eddie’s stern look, Richie gives in. But when he goes to move, his whole back seizes up. “ _Eds_. Fuck. No, I can’t do that.”

Eddie strokes a hand down Richie’s back with a feather light touch. He nudges in closer with his whole body, starting to lightly massage down Richie’s spine. “Alright. It’s okay. We’ll do it like this.”

Richie tips his head back, staring up at the ceiling as if it will open up to reveal some bearded god laughing at all of Richie’s orchestrated misfortune. But damn, does Eddie know what he’s doing with his hands. “This is… It’s a little…”

“It’s not weird,” Eddie insists, even as he wiggles impossibly closer. He’s straddling one of Richie’s thighs now, working both hands around his lower back to dig in and loosen the muscles there. Their faces are agonizingly close, breath bouncing back and forth. “Does it feel good?”

Richie almost swallows his tongue. The question elicits a near-Pavlovian response, blood starting to fill him out between his legs. “Uh. Yeah. Yeah, I might be good. Thanks. I’m good.”

“You’re still so tight,” Eddie grunts, really digging his fingers in. “Relax. I’ve got you.”

Spluttering out a nervous peal of laughter, Richie starts to lean back. His muscles really are releasing, and frankly he’d do anything to get away from Eddie before things head south quicker than the blood in his body. “Eddie. I’m fine.”

“Stop moving,” Eddie complains, climbing up his body after him.

“ _Eddie_ —”

His frantic backwards scramble backfires, and he lands flat on his back as his hands slip out from under him. Eddie topples after him, pressed so tight from shoulder to hip they might as well be vacuum sealed. Their noses bump, and Richie can tell the instant that Eddie realizes he’s hard as a rock, because his big owl eyes double in size.

“Richie,” he breathes, chest heaving against him. His whole expression shifts, morphing from a soft surprise to a pornographically molten heat.

Bringing his hands up to Eddie’s sides, Richie twists his fingers in the soft fabric of his t-shirt. He doesn’t know whether he’s trying to pull him closer or keep him at bay. Maybe he’s just trying to lock them in this moment — maintain the fragile, tension-taught air between them.

Because being here like this? It hurts. Not in the throbbing of his muscles, but in the lancing hope of his heart. He doesn’t know which would kill him faster — if Eddie pulled away from him now, or if he closed the distance and it didn’t mean anything.

Eddie shifts in a slow, deliberate way, dragging his thigh over the hardness begging for attention between Richie’s legs. Richie _breaks_. A full-body shiver wracks him as a groan tears out through his chest. His hands unfurl from Eddie’s shirt to dip under, nails scrabbling up his lean sides. He flexes his hips upward, chasing the pressure that’s just on the wrong side of _not enough_.

“What do you want?” Eddie asks, darting his tongue out to trace the bow of Richie’s lips.

“Anything,” Richie pleads on a whine. “ _Anything_.”

Eddie grips Richie’s jaw in one hand, opening his mouth to dip his tongue inside. It’s a filthy tease — slick, rolling thrusts into Richie’s mouth that make him genuinely worried he’s going to come in his pants like he’s thirteen. Richie grips Eddie’s hips, dragging him down hard against him. But Eddie just retracts his tongue, nipping sharply at Richie’s lower lip.

Wiggling a hand between their flush bodies, Eddie flicks open the button of Richie’s jeans. He reaches into Richie’s boxers and strokes him in an agonizingly loose grip. Richie spreads his legs wider, tipping his head back in a desperate ploy for attention. And Eddie knows him — knows his body’s ticks and quirks and needs. He latches his mouth around the skin next to Richie’s Adam’s apple, nibbling a wet trail up towards his chin.

“Richie baby,” he pants, eyes dark and hungry. His hand twists on an upstroke before sliding down to grip tightly at the base. “Do you want me to—”

The front door pushes open, Bill strolling in with the confidence of a man with an open invitation. “Hey Rich, have you seen Ed— _Oh god_.” He slaps his hands over his eyes, even though Eddie’s hand has already retracted from Richie’s pants with enough speed to disturb the sound barrier. “I’m so sorry.”

“Found him,” Richie says with a deep hollowness to his words, watching as the giddy flush to Eddie’s cheeks fades away to a pale horror. Then, to Eddie, he weakly jokes, “Well, if anything would teach me to lock my door, that’d be it.”

“I’m sorry,” Eddie mutters softly, straightening out his clothes and running a hand through his wild hair. “I…” He darts his eyes up to Bill, who’s still standing traumatized in the doorway. “Did you need me?”

Dropping his hand, Bill chances a look. “Uh, yeah.” He glances between Richie and Eddie, brow furrowing in concern. “Did I interrupt something?”

Richie rolls his eyes, feeling frustration coil up in his gut like a snake ready to strike. “I’d say so, Big Bill. Figured you’d know what a hand job looks like.”

Eddie shoots him a sharp look, lightly squeezing his shoulder to quiet him. He turns back to Bill, gnawing on his lip. “Did something happen?”

“No, no,” Bill assures, taking a half-step back. “You just said you’d help me—”

“Figure out a replacement for the reception band,” Eddie echoes as he remembers. “Fuck. I forgot. I’m sorry.”

Bill waves him off, inching another step away from the growing tension. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it, man. I’ll work it out on my own.”

“No, I’ll be there, okay?” He darts an anxious glance down at Richie, then back. “Just give me a sec?”

Bill nods, casting one last awkward glance around the room. He shuts the door softly behind him, and Eddie waits until they can’t hear the pad of his footsteps down the hall before slowly turning his whole attention to Richie. The look on his face makes Richie want to plug his ears and tune out every bullshit backtracking bumble that’s about to burst out of his mouth.

“Richie—”

“Please don’t,” he says on a tired sigh. “Whatever you wanna say, just don’t. Just kiss me.”

Eddie squeezes his eyes shut, like if he clenches hard enough he’ll actually manage to turn back time. “We made a mistake. And that’s okay. It happens. We just… We can’t do it again.”

“I miss you,” Richie admits in a fit of stubbornness.

“We agreed.” Eddie opens his eyes and lets his shoulders slump in the face of Richie’s defiant expression. “We both said this was the right thing to do.”

“If it means I have to feel like this, maybe I don’t want to be right.”

Eddie pushes up to his feet, and Richie mirrors his cues. “It’ll get better,” he promises, though it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself along the way. He starts toward the door, and Richie trails after him like a lost child. “We just have to let it.”

Richie presses himself flat against the door, blocking Eddie’s exit. Eddie watches his antics with such tender exasperation that Richie wants to pluck his own heart out of his chest and stomp on it so it stops thudding against his ribcage hard enough to bruise. “Please, Eddie. I love you, and I— I’m going crazy.”

“I know. Trust me, I know.” Eddie toes forward and places his palms against Richie’s chest. “We just have to give it time.”

Tears prick at the back of Richie’s eyes. He feels like a sleep-frustrated toddler. Like none of his requests are coming out clear, and all he can do to get his feelings out is throw himself down on the floor and scream. Instead, he lifts his hands to Eddie’s hips, his grip desperate even as his words come out calm.

“I’m sorry, Eddie. I know I messed up. I don’t know that I’ve ever done anything right in my entire life besides somehow tricking you into liking me in the first place. And I ruined it. I know I did. I know I’m fucked up, but I’m trying so hard to—”

“Stop.” His face crumples up like it physically aches him to hear this. “ _Stop_.”

Richie bends his knees, sliding down the door a couple inches to crouch eye level with Eddie. “No, come on, listen. Please. I’m trying so hard to get my shit together, Eds. But I need you to know that guy… I don’t even remember his name! He didn’t mean anything, and I was so out of my mind I didn’t even know what I was doing. And I know that’s just an excuse, and I still did what I did, but I really thought we weren’t together. Truly. I need you to understand that. Because if I thought for one second we still had even a sliver of a chance, I would have been at your door, not out there—”

“I know,” Eddie says firmly, fingers curling up in Richie’s shirt. “Babe, I know. If I thought any different I wouldn’t be talking to you like this. That’s not the problem. Not… Not all of it.”

“I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you,” Richie mutters, eyes darting across Eddie’s face like this could be his last chance to memorize it. “Never. Not on purpose. Not even if I’m pissed off, or if it would save my fucking life, or _whatever_.”

“I know,” Eddie says again, half-laughing in a way that sounds like it rattles some important organ loose. “I’m not punishing you with this, okay? That’s not what this is about.”

Richie coasts his palms up Eddie’s sides, sliding them around to rest at his sharp shoulder blades, caging him loosely against his body in an open plea to stay there forever. “Then what is it about? Because I know we agreed, but every day that I wake up miserable I forget a little bit more what the point of all of this is.”

“We’re not okay,” Eddie says a little shakily. “And I don’t think either of us are really equipped to help each other.”

“I’ll do anything to make you happy, Eddie. _Anything_. Whatever you want, just say the word.”

Eddie takes a step back, breaking the bubble of Richie’s embrace. He pushes a hand through his own hair in frustration. “That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about, Rich.”

“What?” His brain can’t compute the emotional math fast enough to really understand what’s going on. “I’m trying to help.”

“I know you are, and it’s very sweet.” It doesn’t sound like he thinks it’s sweet. It sounds like he thinks Richie’s been spitting in his morning coffee. “But it’s like… God, it sounds so stupid, but… Do you ever actually hear yourself? It’s always, ‘ _Whatever you say, Eds. Whatever you want. Anything_.’"

Richie frowns, less at the words and more at the odd pitch to Eddie’s impersonation — a deeper, more nasal tone that sounds uncomfortably close to Fozzie Bear. “Do you… think I sound like that?”

“Focus, Richie!” He bounces on his toes, trying not to laugh. “I’m serious. You remember how things were in the beginning? Like, you used to push back on my bullshit all the time! It was exciting, and fun, and _sexy_. I really liked that asshole of a guy, you know? I liked who I was with that guy. And now it’s like… Like half the moves you make are calculated to ruffle as few feathers as possible, and you were always placating me like I had one foot out the door.”

“To be fair,” Richie starts, voice choked. “You promptly put both feet out the door when I started talking about the future.”

Eddie deflates a bit, and Richie wishes they could go back to even two minutes before, when Eddie was shit talking him with a terrible muppet voice. “Yeah. Okay, I did that. I’ll cop to it. I freaked out, but that’s… That’s something different. I’m talking about you right now. I’m worried. I spent so many years of my own life shoving myself down in these compartmentalized boxes, pretending I was living a life that I wanted just so I could make other people happy, and I don’t want to watch you do the same thing. Especially not because of me.”

“No, it’s not like that.” Richie pushes off from the door and slinks over to the sink to clink around and fumble himself a glass of water. He’s desperate for a little distance, suddenly. Desperate for something to do with his hands. “I was just trying to be a good boyfriend.”

“I never thought you had to try,” Eddie shoots back, like Richie has just said the most offensive thing in any human language. “I knew who you were from the start, Richie. Even if you forgot along the way, I didn’t. I chose that annoying piece of shit.”

Richie’s hands shake as he brings the glass of water to his lips. He chugs it down like he hasn’t had water in years, even though Eddie put him on a strict water regimen when they started dating. But come to think of it, in the past month they’ve been apart, maybe Richie _hadn’t_ had any water. Huh.

“Rich?”

He turns back to Eddie, startled back into the conversation. “I… So is that why you ran in the other direction when I proposed? Because I know it was impulsive and— Whatever. Did you say no because you were scared you were gonna waste your time with a guy pretending to be something he’s not?”

“No, I was scared—” Eddie stops himself short, taking a deep breath. “I _am_ scared that I don’t know how to be alone. I hop from one person to the next, relying on them entirely for my happiness, and I— I don’t know. Maybe you can relate to this, but um… I think I spent so long hiding for the benefit of other people, I don’t always know which thoughts in my head are actually coming from me. My brain is just this mess of all these expectations that come from all these different directions. It’s exhausting.”

Richie huffs an ashamed and humorless laugh. “Yeah. I get that.”

Eddie smiles at him then — one of those devastatingly beautiful smiles that creases the dimples at his cheeks and furrows the stern, caterpillar eyebrows above his big brown peepers and turns them into something soft and precious. But there’s something sad behind it, this time around. A sheen of wetness to his eyes and a quiver to the corner of his mouth.

“But. Um. Well, I fell for a guy who made me proud of all the parts of myself that I used to be ashamed of. He made me feel like what I wanted was important. And I want to treat it like it is, because I kind of believe him.”

Something eases in Richie’s chest — a terrible vice he didn’t even know was crushing his insides until it loosened. “We get it,” Richie mutters, trying not to cry at the sudden relief. “You’re in love with Ben.”

Eddie laughs a real, full, mirthful laugh for the first time since they separated, and it feels like Richie has broken the surface of the water and taken his first burning, blissful gasp of air.

“Shut up,” he says, swatting Richie’s chest. “I’m in love with _you_.”

“But?” Richie prods. Not bitterly. Not brokenly. Just patiently waiting for the last bits of Eddie’s truth.

Eddie looks bolstered by the understanding. “But I think I have to figure out how to take care of myself before I can figure out how to take care of an ‘us.’ I think maybe you do, too.”

Richie nods, letting himself process the words for a moment. He quirks an ironic sort of smile. “Imagine if we had been mature enough to talk about this five weeks ago.”

“Be realistic,” Eddie teases. “We’re only thirty-six.”

Guffawing, Richie claps Eddie on the shoulder. “Maybe by the time we’re eighty we’ll have finally worked through our bullshit. We’ll be the hottest couple in the nursing home.”

“It’s not about conquering it, Rich.” Something glitters in Eddie’s eyes, hopeful and kind. “It’s about starting.”

Richie refuses to hear it as a promise. Refuses to covet the words and hold them close to his chest and bury them so no one can ever take them away. Because if he’s going to try to fucking start this whole _getting his life together_ thing, then he has to do it alone. Not with the ghost of the idea that, **someday** , he’ll get to be with Eddie again.

“Get out of here,” he says with soft humor, ignoring the butterflies in his stomach that never would die, no matter how many times Eddie’s walked out his door. “Bill probably thinks we’re fucking.”

“Let him think that,” Eddie smirks, even as he shuffles toward the door.

And Richie knows that — whether their journeys of healing pull them further apart, or their struggles for clarity last fifty years, or even if one of them drops dead in the next ten seconds — Richie Tozier will always love Edward Kaspbrak.

—————————————————

Richie gives himself two days to sit with his conversation with Eddie. Two days of barely leaving his bed, nestled up in his covers like an oversized burrito. Of eating take out a few too many times in a row for forty-eight hours, and binging enough episodes of _The West Wing_ that Netflix gets concerned.

But then, like he’d brushed away the dust bunnies from his shelves, he gets to work on sweeping away the sludge that’s caked over his insides — the clingy cobwebs that cloud his brain, and the prickly burrs that have hitched a ride in his chest.

He steps out into the hallway, looking at the doors lining the walls like he’s on the set of a gameshow called _Face Your Mental Health_. Bob Barker would probably be the host, shambling gaunt and ghoulishly as he judged Richie’s choices. Is Bob Barker still alive…? It doesn’t matter — he’d probably claw his way out of hell just to drone on about spaying and neutering pets as Richie had a mental breakdown on daytime television.

Richie’s stalling. He knows he is — avoiding a conversation he’d been thinking about for weeks.

 _Coward_ , Bob Barker’s voices hisses in his head.

“Maybe so,” Richie mutters under his breath. “But not this time, you old bastard.”

He stalks forward toward the door closest to him, rapping an odd rhythm with his knuckles. Mike opens the door with a warm smile, despite the exhaustion clear in his eyes.

“Hey, Rich. What’s up?”

“Not much,” he says, managing to sound as far from casual as possible. “Thought we could chat a bit. If you’re not busy.”

Mike steps out of the doorway, waving Richie inside. “Always got time for you, Trashmouth. Want a beer?”

 _God yes_ , he thinks, even as he says, “Better not.”

If Mike is at all suspicious about Richie’s sudden aversion to alcohol, he doesn’t mention it. He just leads on to the living room, sitting in a comfortable sprawl in his recliner. He was always good at minding his own business, giving people space and time to open up on their own.

Richie doesn’t have the patience or attention span for all that.

“So what’s the deal with you and Sarah?”

Mike’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “I— What?”

“I may run my mouth off, but I’m observant.” Richie shrugs, laying his body out across the couch. “She hasn’t been around in a while. And you always have that expression on your face when you think people aren’t looking — the one where it looks like you’ve smelled something really bad, but really it’s just the man pain poking at your insides.”

He opens his mouth like he wants to object, but gives up the game quickly, sinking deeper into the cushions. “Am I really that much of a sad sack?”

 _Takes one to know one_ , the mean Bob Barker in Richie’s brain taunts. But Richie just gifts a soft smile in sympathy. “Kinda. Figured you might wanna talk about it, big guy.”

Mike looks vaguely embarrassed by having a problem at all. He’s always been the stable and steady one — the broad shoulders everyone leans on when their knees start to shake. Bill turned to him when the director of his last film tried to strong-arm him into a different ending. Ben had several fatherhood related panic attacks on this very couch leading up to the days of Emily’s birth. Hell, Richie had even sought him out when he had a terrible burning sensation every time he peed, and the guy had talked him off the ledge and calmly accompanied him to the health clinic. It’s about time he cashed in some support of his own.

“Sarah’s grandmother is moving to Florida,” Mike admits, but to Richie it feels like a complete non sequitur. “She’s got a nice spot in this retirement community. She’s gonna learn how to paint, apparently. And find a boyfriend.”

“Uh, as fascinated as I am by the thought of a stranger’s geriatric sex life, I have to ask what the fuck this has to do with anything.”

Mike laughs despite the situation. “Sarah’s lived with her since she was in college. She worries about her a lot. It’s part of the reason… Well, she never wanted to move out of her grandma’s place, just in case something terrible happened and she wasn’t there.”

Richie nods, as if he has any clue where this is going. “Bud, is Sarah hightailing it to Florida, too? ‘Cause long-distance is a bitch, but it’s not impossible.”

“No,” Mike says on a sigh. “She wants to move in together.”

“Okay?”

“I told her that I’m not sure if I’m ready.”

All Richie can do is blink. It’s like Mike has just told him that the sky is yellow, and it’s always been yellow, and the concept of blue was invented in an elaborate fever dream. “Mike. You’ve been together for, like, six years.”

“It’ll be seven in February,” he sheepishly corrects him.

“Jesus Christ, Mikey.” Who would have thought that Mike would be the _Eddie_ in this situation? Richie had expected them to be on relatively the same page, and here they are in completely different books. “Did she murder you? Am I looking at a ghost right now?”

Mike drags a palm down his face in distress. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I panicked, and then I thought I would get over it, but I’ve just been sitting in a state of static panic for two whole weeks. She told me to call her when I grow up, but every time I pick up the phone I feel like I’m gonna faint.”

“Alright. Well. Hot tip: your radio silence probably isn’t helping a damn thing.”

“I’m an asshole,” Mike groans. “I’m never the asshole! Before Sarah, I was like Prince Charming. I was the guy who always said The Right Thing. Now my brain has just been replaced with… With a butthole.”

Richie splutters a laugh. “Very descriptive. I love it. But you’re not an asshole, you’re a pussy. There’s a difference.”

Mike gives him a flat look. “I’m so glad we had this talk.”

“Look,” Richie starts, flicking his eyes up to the ceiling so he doesn’t have to make eye contact in case he starts getting weepy. “I think… Man, sometimes people find their soulmates, right? And the only thing they know how to do in response is turn into the worst version of themselves. I don’t know why. Maybe a chance at happiness is scarier than all the misery we’re used to.”

He doesn’t see it, but he can _feel_ the considering narrow of Mike’s eyes. “Is the honeymoon phase over for you and Eddie?”

A pained puff of air escapes Richie’s chest like somebody punched it out of him. “It’s all over.”

“Oh shit.” Mike clambers out of his recliner to curl up on the couch under Richie’s legs. “Are you okay, man?”

“Yes and no,” Richie answers honestly. His chest throbs, but it’s not heavy like it’s been the past month. “I’m obviously fucking devastated, but we’ve been working through it.”

Mike looks at him like he needs a lobotomy. “...Together?”

“Kinda.” His voice is laced with the exhaustion of a man who never does anything the easy way. “I don’t know. I know it’s fucked.”

“You sure you don’t want a drink?”

“That’s what got me into half of this mess in the first place,” Richie declines. He scrunches his toes up over Mike’s thighs in a silent gesture that he’s okay. “I’m trying the whole _learning from my mistakes_ bullshit.”

Mike nods, still looking a little lost. “And you can’t do that while you’re with Eddie?”

Richie rolls his eyes. “It’s not just my decision, is it? I— Look, I know I brought it up, and I’m glad I told you, but I don’t really want to get into all the gritty specifics of how it all went to hell, okay? But I’m doing fine. Better. I don’t feel great, but I don’t feel like I’m dying.”

“That's something.” Mike claps him on the side of his knee. “And now you don’t have to go through it alone. But you wanna know my advice?”

“Hit me with your best shot.”

“Don’t torture yourself trying to work through this alongside Eddie,” Mike pins him with a serious look that Richie can’t look away from no matter how much he’d like to. “You broke up. Work through it with a therapist.”

A cold sweat breaks out over Richie’s body. “We’re still friends.”

“You’re not friends.” It’s gentle despite all its bluntness. “You were never friends. You guys are in love with each other, and until you’re not, you’re never gonna be _just friends_.”

Richie sits up ramrod straight, recoiling his legs from Mike’s lap. “Call your girlfriend,” he says in the murky in-between of an order and a plea. “Tell her she’s worth facing your fears for.”

Mike shrinks away from Richie’s advice. Like they’re both quaking under the weight of what they know they should do. “What if I don’t know how to live with somebody else?”

“Learn,” Richie answers simply,

A wheeze of a laugh startles out of Mike’s chest. “Yeah. Sarah was right, I guess. It’s time for me to grow up.”

“We all need to grow up,” Richie mutters, wishing he picked literally any other moment in his life to try and stop drinking.

He’d been so focused on the relief he would feel sharing his burden with someone, he hadn’t considered how much it would suck if they told him something he didn’t want to hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *****Warning for: brief and mild descriptions of past homophobic violence.*****


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *****For more specific warnings related to this chapter, please see the end notes.

Richie is exhausted. He feels like a sponge wrung out in the sink and left to shrivel up under a burning ray of summer sun. Except it’s winter, and all he’s done all day is _talk_.

Normally he loves talking. He’s made a pretty good living out of it, but even if he didn’t get paid to make dick jokes under blinding lights, his mouth does its utmost best to flap every minute that it’s not otherwise occupied with chewing or drooling across a pillow. Richie Tozier has never met a silence he couldn’t fill.

Until today.

He sits across from his new therapist — Dr. Chorcoran — and speaks in short, stilted sentences. She's a friendly enough woman that she smiles while he stumbles over his words, but a stern enough professional that she never helps him. Old enough, too, that a part of Richie worries that she’ll drop dead before he ever manages to finish vocalizing a thought.

It takes him twenty minutes to stutter through even the beginning of the catastrophe of his failed relationship. Richie can try to explain it all he wants, but how well can words really capture what had happened between him and Eddie? Not the break up, or the maybe sort of accidental infidelity — that was some pretty straightforward stuff. But what they had meant to each other. What reckless combination of vowels and consonants could even begin to cover _that_?

The soft, shaky, “I loved him,” he mutters pales in comparison to the way Eddie has laid roots in his chest. Even when Richie corrects himself — “I _love_ him. Present tense.” — in a stronger, steadier voice, it doesn’t live up to the way the words always sound in his head.

Dr. Chorcoran nods along as Richie weaves a bumbling tale of his ex-boyfriend’s hand down his pants and a chasm in his heart, but at the end of it all she just blinks her black, beady eyes and says, “Thank you for telling me all that. But that’s just what’s bothering you _now_. It’s a symptom.”

“Of what?”

She shrugs blandly. “You tell me.”

“Huh?”

“Richard,” she sighs, sounding entirely too similar to Stan. “You were not born with some inability to love, though I can tell by the stupid look on your face that’s what you believe.”

Richie shrinks down in his chair. “Are you allowed to call me stupid?”

“Yes. But my point is, throughout your life you’ve been given obstacles and traumas that you don’t know how to deal with. That’s normal. That’s why so many people come to my office and pay me so much money. Somewhere down the line someone or something taught you to fear your feelings and run in the opposite direction of your own instincts. And whether it happened thirty years ago or thirty days ago, _that’s_ what’s keeping you from the things you actually want.”

“... Are you saying that, in an effort to protect myself, I’m actually fucking myself over?”

“Very astute. Yes.”

A sudden rage overcomes him. That someone — that _Bowers_ and all his fuckface minions and all the adults that never did _anything_ — could have left such deep imprints on his mind is overwhelming. He wants to scream. He wants to throw his chair out the window just to feel like he has one ounce of control.

“I… Don’t think I’m ready to talk about that part of it all quite yet.” Pain he knows how to manage, anger is slippery and full of teeth. “Can we start with Eddie and work our way back?”

Dr. Chorcoran nods kindly. “Of course. Whatever helps. But you’re not going to like what I have to say.”

It’s not like it can be any worse than what Mike offered. “I rarely like when people who aren’t me are talking. Go for it.”

“It doesn’t matter how hard you try to get over what happened between you and this Eddie,” she starts in a raspy voice that Richie knows he can look forward to in his own future if he doesn’t stop huffing down a pack a day. “You can only get so far in the healing process if you don’t actually let him go.”

He actually much prefers the way Mike had said it. “Like I’ve been saying, we’re _friends_. I’m not just gonna tell him to fuck off.”

“You said you’ve made the effort to stop drinking when you’re upset?”

Richie’s head is spinning from the change in topic. “Uh, yeah.”

“Do you keep alcohol in your apartment?”

He narrows his eyes. “You’re a sneaky broad, I’ll give you that.”

Dr. Chorcoran doesn’t bother to hide the amused quirk of her lips. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Richard. And I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. All I can do is give you advice. As I’ve done that and your sixty minutes are up, the choice is yours to make.”

—————————————————

Richie has always loved making choices. Saying it plainly like that, it sounds dumb. But there was a game his dad used to play with him — a distraction technique born out of road trips with a hyperactive kid.

“Lollipops or bubblegum?” his dad would ask.

At five years old, Richie would think too hard on what felt like a true conundrum. “Lollipops! ‘Cause they crunch!”

And before the three hour drive was over, they’d be on to the real heavy hitters, like, “Fire-breathing elephants or flying tigers?”

Richie would laugh too loud for their cramped SUV, and his mom would have to rub away a headache even as she smiled at him through the rearview mirror. The answer was elephants, though. It was always elephants.

Until Richie got a bit older, and his dad showed him how exciting it was when his choices actually mattered. “What do you think, Rich? Myrtle Beach for the summer? Or Cape Cod?”

That summer in Myrtle Beach was one of the best summers of his life. Fourteen years old, with arcades all up and down the boardwalk. Beautiful boys running around shirtless and glistening through the water. And he’d gotten to pick that.

Even when the choices Richie had to make got scarier, his dad taught him it could still be fun. And powerful, too. Choices meant taking control of life. Living how he wanted to live.

Like when Richie pulled his dad aside after high school graduation and told him that he didn’t want to go to college. He wanted to try and tell jokes. Like for real. As like, a living, for some reason. And after a long, nerve-wracking silence his dad had just asked, “Los Angeles or New York City?”

No matter how bad things got in life, Richie knew he always had choices. Granted, sometimes those choices narrowed down to _whiskey or tequila_ , but that was still something. There would be nights where he’d have to look in the mirror and think, _alright, lay down and die or power through it_? And then the next week his life would turn around and he’d have to consider _Leno or Letterman_?

A few weeks before his thirty-second birthday, Richie came out to his parents over the phone. His heart was pounding in his throat, and his hands were so sweaty that he could barely keep a grip on the phone, but he had done it. He’d been expecting the choice following to be something like _never mention something like this ever again or find a new family_.

But his dad had hummed in consideration before asking, “Leonardo DiCaprio or Freddie Prinze Jr.?”

“What? No, neither!” Richie answered, affronted. And, because he had come to learn that sometimes there are more choices than what you’ve been given, he continued with, “Mark Hamill.”

“ _Really_?”

And yes. Really. Because while other teenage boys who’d been alive post-1983 might have been fantasizing about being the roguish Han Solo, whipping out a blaster and a witty one-liner and getting to makeout with some babe in a metal bikini, Richie’s mind had been on other things. Namely what it might be like to be Yoda, arguing with a twunk Jedi wannabe and crawling all over his sweaty back.

He still thinks about it sometimes...

But it’s hard to find the fun in choices today. Stay Eddie’s friend, knowing he’ll always want more than he can have, or cut him loose to try and heal, knowing that he’ll probably never meet another man like that in his lifetime? Where’s the secret third option for Richie to pluck out of thin air? Where’s the simplicity of lollipops and beaches, and his father’s warm approval at any outcome?

Richie has never wanted to call his father more than he does right now. He almost does it — phone open to his contact screen. But he’s only told his parents the bare minimum about Eddie, still embarrassed to be open with them about his relationships despite all of their acceptance. And, ultimately, he’s ashamed. Ashamed of the things he’s done to bring him to this point, and ashamed of the fact that he still doesn’t know how to face life’s tougher decisions on his own.

He’s about to slip his phone back in his pocket when it rings in his hand. The name _Gary_ flashes across his screen, along with a very unflattering picture of his agent stuffing a salad into his mouth. Richie groans, because the last thing he wants to do right now is get into another argument about his decision to ditch the stand-up scene.

But he answers, because, contrary to popular belief, he’s actually a responsible adult sometimes. “What do you want, you ass leech?”

“What the fuck is an ass leech?”

Richie comes up short. “I… don’t know. It means you suck ass, I guess.”

“Coming from you, I’ll assume that’s a compliment.” That he misses the severity with which Richie rolls his eyes is a devastating loss. “How do you feel about L.A.?”

“I think that if New Jersey is the country’s armpit, L.A. is the meticulously waxed and bleached anus.”

“Damn Richie,” Gary’s crinkled face rings loud and clear through the line. “What is it with you and butts?”

He shrugs, starting toward the kitchen to eat some Apple Jacks dry and straight out of the box. “I’m gay.”

“Lots of people are gay, but none of them are quite as obsessed with the human rectum as you are, my man.”

Fair enough. “Was there a point to your L.A. question, or is this just a general poll you’re conducting for all your clients?”

“Right. Well, since I’m an amazing agent, I’ve got a sweet tv gig for you coming down the tubes. The good shit, too: Showtime.”

Richie nods along absently, brushing the cereal crumbs off his shirt. “So like a guest appearance?”

“No, Richie. Like a starring role.”

He chokes on his next bite, the dry crisps digging into his esophagus like a knife. When he gets the situation under control — after much hacking and drinking directly from the faucet — he almost screams into the receiver. “You’re fucking with me.”

Gary clucks his tongue. “I don’t fuck around about business. The executive producer is a huge fan. He thinks you’re perfect for it.”

“So I would have to… I’d have to _move_ to L.A.”

“At least for part of the year,” he agrees. “Why, does that cut into your plans to get hepatitis on the subway?”

“You sound like—” _Eddie_. “Look man, can I think about it?”

“It’s your career,” he says, though the tone implies he means something along the lines of ‘ _Don’t be a moron_.’ “I’ll send you the script. Read it. If you decide you want to, you know, make some money, then I’ll arrange a screen test.”

Richie hangs up without any further acknowledgement.

As if it wasn’t hard enough having Mike and Dr. Chorcoran needling him to put some space between him and Eddie, now the fucking universe is in on the joke, too. And L.A. of all places? He might as well go to the moon.

“Fuck me,” he mutters to the empty room. “What am I supposed to do?”

The silence that answers back almost kills him.

—————————————————

There’s a knock at his front door, whisper quiet, as if whoever’s on the other side is half-hoping he doesn’t answer. But despite the fact that it’s well past one in the morning, Richie is lying in bed wide awake. So his reluctant guest is shit out of luck.

He’s not exactly surprised when he opens the door and comes face to face with Eddie. Still, every time he sees him it’s like missing a step on the stairs. His stomach swoops and his heart stops, and for a second it feels like all there is is falling. Richie doesn’t know if he hates this feeling or lives off of it.

“Hi there, Eddie Spaghetti.” He takes in the purple rings under his eyes and the rumpled twist of his pajamas. “Everything okay?”

“I…” A pink flush slowly dusts across Eddie’s cheeks, like he’s mortified to find that his own feet brought him here. “Jesus. I shouldn’t have woken you up. I’m sorry.”

Richie waves him off. “I wasn’t sleeping.”

Eddie’s gaze darts over him, like he’s making a mental checklist. _Drunk? High? Boning?_ Considering the last time Eddie made a late night visit Richie was pretty much all of the above, he can’t be too offended. That doesn’t mean he’s not impatient, though.

“Do you want to come in?”

“Oh.” He worries at his bottom lip with his teeth, like he wants to say yes, but doesn’t know how. “Well…”

Richie makes it easier on him and all the more harder for himself. He takes Eddie by the hand, gently tugging him inside. Their palms stay sealed as they make their way to the couch, taking up perches on opposite sides. Eddie finally releases his grip as he curls up with his knees tucked to his chest, but he doesn’t go far — his nerves have him idly toying with Richie’s fingers.

“What’s wrong?”

Eddie glances up at him through his lashes, looking sheepish and small. “I had a nightmare. I know it’s stupid. I’m an adult, that shit shouldn’t bother me.”

“I mean, if anyone would know how to scare you, it’d be your own brain.” He holds his breath as Eddie cracks a tiny smile. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Eddie scoots closer to him, so Richie raises his arm in invitation. And it probably doesn’t mean anything that he presses along his side. It’s probably just easier to talk about if he can avoid making eye contact. But Richie can’t help but swell with a bit of pride at the thought that, despite everything, he might be a point of safety for Eddie.

“I was back at my mom’s house,” he starts, with his temple tipped against Richie’s shoulder and his palm sliding up to rest against his chest. “All the doors were locked, or blocked, or… I don’t know, sealed. And there weren’t any windows suddenly, and my mom was just watching me scramble to try and leave. Not talking, just watching. And the house kept getting smaller and smaller, until the ceiling crumbled away and started pouring out dirt. I couldn’t breathe, and she wouldn’t say anything, and I—”

“Hey,” Richie stops him when his breathing gets too quick. He curls his arm tighter around him. “It’s not real. You’re not there, right? You’re here with me.”

Eddie’s fingers curl around the collar of Richie’s t-shirt. “You know I still call her every Sunday?”

A cold marble of dread thunks down into the bottom of Richie’s stomach. “You never mentioned that. That’s quite the hefty secret to keep for half a year.”

“I know,” Eddie murmurs. “I guess I kept it to myself because I don’t want you to think I’m an idiot.”

“Eddie, look at me.” Richie waits until he tilts his head back enough to lock eyes. “There’s nothing you could do that will ever make me think you’re _not_ an idiot.”

He jabs his fingers into Richie’s ribs, but he’s smiling. He’s so handsome Richie could cry. “You’re an asshole. Why does your bullshit make me feel better?”

“Because I know you.” Richie laces their fingers again, resting their joined hands on his stomach. “I know that you’ve spent most of your life with people treating you like every little thing is the end of the world. And sometimes all you need is someone to remind you that it isn’t.”

Eddie’s body loses every ounce of stiffness he carries as he practically melts on top of Richie. His eyes are wide and stricken, and his voice is soft and breathy as he leans closer and closer and closer. “Rich…”

Richie wants to kiss him. He wants it so bad it’s like an itch under his skin. Eddie would let him — he can tell just by the look on his face. He wants it, too.

“I’m seeing someone,” he blurts, and it’s not until Eddie jerks back looking like he’s about to hurl that Richie fully computes his own words. “A therapist, I mean.”

A sigh of relief punches out of Eddie, and he slowly eases back along Richie’s side. “That’s great, man. Mike said… Well, he mentioned you nixed the drinking.”

Richie huffs a laugh. _Snitch_. “Did he also mention that I told him we split?” Eddie’s soft surprise is answer enough. “Guess not.”

“I— Oh. Well. He’s taking that information pretty well.”

“Yeah,” Richie noncommittally agrees, because apparently he’s the only one getting in trouble for hanging around his ex. “I don’t know what nuclear reaction you were expecting.”

Eddie shrugs. “I just don’t want to do something that affects the dynamic of the whole friend group. I guess Mike was a good test run. I promise I’ll tell the others soon.”

Richie very carefully doesn’t mention the fact that Eddie said he’d do it before Stan and Bill’s wedding, which is, at this point, only eight days away. “Sure. I mean, it sucks and it’s scary, but I think it helps to talk about it.”

“I’m sorry you had to tell the first person alone,” Eddie mutters. He presses his mouth to Richie’s shoulder, not pursing his lips in a kiss, but going through the motions of the gesture without crossing some kind of unspoken line.

“That’s the thing about breaking up, Eds. We’re not supposed to do it together.”

As the words leave his mouth, he’s reminded suddenly of the time he was convinced to wax his chest for a movie role. The aesthetician smoothed the first strip over Richie’s pectoral and he was slammed with a deep and immediate regret. He’d wanted to heat the wax back up and gently peel it off, using oil or alcohol or _whatever_ to save him the terrible agony of having such a vital part of him torn from the follicles. But before he could open his mouth and back track the whole process, the wax strip — along with his chest hair — had been ripped from his unwilling body.

This is what it feels like when his stupid mouth gets ahead of his brain.

Eddie leans away from him as his face goes carefully neutral in the way that makes chills go up and down Richie’s spine. “Do you really mean that?”

“No.” The reply spews out of him like he’s a child caught in a lie by his parents. “But I should, right? I mean, Mike thinks so. Dr. Chorcoran thinks so. Are we not telling more people because we know they’re just gonna say the same thing? How many people have to say it until we listen?”

Eddie’s blank expression breaks into something altogether more confusing — a warm, soft smile and sad, sad eyes. “The entire U.S. population could line up outside your door to tell you the same thing, and you still wouldn’t listen, Richie.”

He has to laugh, because Eddie does know him well. “I _might_ have a small stubborn streak.”

“Right.” He rolls his eyes and starts resituating on the couch, pushing and pulling at Richie until he’s laying on his back. “That’s like saying that you _might_ tell a few jokes.”

“What are you doing?”

Eddie drapes himself over Richie, snuggling down. “I’m getting comfortable.”

“…Why?” But his arms wrap around Eddie on instinct.

“Because it's almost two in the morning, and I’m tired. But I can go, if you’re uncomfortable.” He says it with the sincerity of a man who would follow through, but with the confidence of man that knows he won’t have to.

“I’m not uncomfortable.” Though he is fucking baffled. What the fuck is happening? How did they get here? “I can just give you my bed, though. If you want. And I mean, I can stay out here. It doesn’t have to be wei—”

“Shh,” Eddie gently hushes him, tucking his face against his throat. “Just hold me, Richie. Is that okay?”

He tightens his arms around him, as if someone is going to burst in and try to take him away. “It’s perfect, Eds.”

They fall asleep like that, tangled together on the couch. Richie can’t begin to wrap his head around it, but maybe he doesn’t have to. Maybe Eddie just needed the company after his nightmare. Maybe everything was suddenly changing all over again. But maybe there are some things that are better off being figured out in the morning.

—————————————————

Richie is late. He was running behind when he left the apartment, but he’s sure his absence is growing more conspicuous by the minute as he stands outside the club with his phone pressed to his ear. But, to be fair, his tardiness both _is_ and _isn’t_ his fault.

It _isn’t_ his fault because he’s not the one that called Gary. He couldn’t have even predicted that his agent would ring as he was halfway out the door. Or that he’d ramble on and on and on, barely taking any breaths, for so long that Richie would have to take the conversation on the road — trying to get a word in from the back seat of his taxi, and trying not to wear an expression of murder as he stood impatiently outside of the gayest club in New York City.

It _is_ his fault because he sent the fucking tape in. It had been almost impulsive. He agreed to read a few pages of the script to his shitty digital camera, and he sent it off thinking nothing would really come of it. At least not for a few weeks. He’d made a film and television career out of mostly playing stoners past their prime, with the occasional dash of over the top satire villains and just a sprinkle of fey but dubiously straight rom-com love interests who were only vaguely interesting in comparison to the female leads. It seemed a little out of the realm of possibility that anyone — fan or not — would actually want him at the center of anything with any real dramatic heft.

“The showrunner is _bananas_ over you,” Gary gushes. “Do you know the kind of pay day we could negotiate out of this? And think of the _Emmy_ nominations, Rich.”

“Alright,” Richie rolls his eyes, leaning back against the brick wall as another group of people bustle into the club, sending a booming blare of bass out onto the streets. “You don’t have to keep jerking me off, Gary. I get your point.”

The man on the other end of the line sighs like he always does — like Richie’s teachers always did, and his soccer coach that one misguided summer, and even his mother on occasion — as if Richie is incapable of knowing what’s good for him. “So what’s the issue, huh? You like the script. I know you like the script, because you never touch shit you’re not interested in.”

“I don’t know what the issue is,” and it’s not even technically a lie. Because if the issue was just that he didn’t want to leave New York City, that would be that. He wouldn’t have sent the stupid video. “But like I told you eight-thousand times, I’m kind of in the middle of something right now.”

Richie can practically hear Gary grinding his teeth over the line. “I like to believe that, despite your projected public persona, you’re not actually an idiot. Please don’t prove me wrong.”

This time it’s Richie that gets hung up on. But he can’t say he’s not grateful for it — anything to bring that conversation to an end.

He takes a deep breath and tries to shrug off the weight of yet another impossible decision. Now is not the precise moment in time that he needs to figure his whole fucking life out. He has a bachelor party to go to.

As he steps inside the club, Richie is made immediately aware of the fact that this is no place for someone in their mid-thirties. Certainly not someone like _him_ in his mid-thirties, who hasn’t taken particularly good care of himself. The music is so loud that his ears are ringing, and the headache pinging at his temples is a near immediate thing. The flashing lights just make him dizzy and disoriented. Not to mention the whole slutty circus aesthetic the place has going on does absolutely nothing for him.

And god, everyone packed shoulder to shoulder on the sweaty dance floor is so energetic. And sexy. And coordinated. Richie could barely dance when he hit the club scene in his twenties, hopped up on a full handle of vodka. He can’t imagine attempting it sober.

He finds the six of them tucked away in a leather half-circle booth off in the corner. The tabletop is covered in empty shot glasses, which Richie finds terribly impressive considering he’s not _that_ late. But as he approaches, Stan is gesticulating wildly with a full gin and tonic, cheeks red and blotchy with drunken joy, so he can’t find that he minds too much that they plowed on ahead without him.

“Somebody asked for a lap dance?” He teases, leaning salaciously against the table.

All of them cheer when his arrival registers, rattling the empty glassware on the table with clumsily flung out arms. Even Eddie looks charmed by his stupid antics, though there’s a pinched expression around his eyes.

“Took you long enough to get here,” Stan drawls, even as he drags himself out of the booth to throw his body around Richie in a hug. “You’ve got catching up to do!”

“No thanks, I’m—” Stan raises his glass to Richie’s mouth so abruptly that he doesn’t have much choice other than to open up or chip a tooth. He accepts a hefty swallow, though half of it dribbles down his chin. “Well. Thanks, pal.”

He catches the simultaneous looks of concern from Eddie and Mike, but he waves them off. His head’s a mess, but he’s not looking to drink to forget. He can handle some booze in moderation.

Stan slides back into the booth and pulls Richie in after him. “So what kept you? A bachelor party is the kind of environment you thrive in, Trashmouth.”

“I resent those implications,” Richie shoots back primly, though a wicked grin cuts across his face. “I was working. My agent was riding my ass again.”

Bill — who looks just as sloshed as Stan, if not _more_ — snorts as he hauls his fiancé closer against his side. “That blows. Gary is an asshole.”

Eddie looks up from where he’s been creating a neat triangle pattern of shot glasses to raise a brow. “Gary’s a hard-ass because he knows what Richie’s capable of. He’s like one of those emotionally constipated dads. It’s kind of sweet.”

“I’ve already got one of those,” Richie shoots back, glancing around for a waiter so he can get something to wash the ass taste of gin out of his mouth. “When I was nine I got so excited to go to the theater to see Jurassic Park that I cried, and I think his brain just went entirely offline.”

Bev makes a derisive noise that’s more teasing than dismissive as she tosses back the last of her tequila sour. “Did we come here to talk about how our parents fucked us up, or did we come here to party? Because I left my baby alone with Ben’s mom, and I wanna make it count.”

“What’s wrong with my mom?” Ben asks, furrowing his brow.

She cups his face in her hands, gazing at him with sweet devotion. “I love you. Let’s dance?”

A tipsy smile breaks out over his face, the wounded confusion erased immediately from his thoughts. “Yeah, okay.”

Richie watches them go, a small tug of jealousy in his gut like a needle pulling thread. “How long do you think until Bev is pregnant again?”

Eddie cackles free and loud, kicking Richie’s shin from across the table. “You’re terrible.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s his brand.”

Richie turns in surprise toward the voice, seeing Sarah shrugging off her jacket behind him. He whips back around to catch Mike’s shy smile, shooting him a supportive thumbs up. It’s good to know that Richie can help solve _some_ problems, if not his own.

“What can I say,” Richie shoots back, even though it’s pretty clear neither Sarah _or_ Mike are listening, as she slides in next to him and kisses him like **she’s** the one who’s been pounding back shots. “The fellas love a bad boy.”

Because Stan manages to be more obnoxious than Richie when he drinks, he scrunches up his face and lets out a dramatic groan. “I’m the one getting married. Why is everyone else getting all the action?”

Bill laughs, nuzzling along Stan’s jaw. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

“No.” And Bill’s face is the epitome of comedic gold. Richie wishes he had his phone out to snap a picture. Wishes he could do a dramatic oil painting of the moment. “I want to dance.”

And oh, this is shaping up to be the best day of Richie’s life. Because even if Stan _wants_ to dance, that doesn’t mean he _can_. Richie is definitely fumbling his phone out now, because that’s one memory he refuses to ever forget.

Stan is tripping over his own feet as he tugs Bill along after him, and a devious grin is cracking open Sarah’s mouth. “Let’s go for a spin, too, lover boy.”

“No, come on,” Mike’s complaining, but he’s following her along anyway, beaming like a fool. “Once you start you never stop. Don’t you want a drink first?”

“Nope! Try and keep up, old man.”

And before Richie can process what’s happening, all of his mirth is gone. Because while all his friends are out there making absolute fools of themselves, he’s sitting there across the table from Eddie, choking on the tension mounting between them.

A million questions pile up behind his teeth. _What did it mean when you fell asleep beside me? Why were you gone in the morning? Have you been avoiding me the past few days? Have the last three months just been a terrible nightmare? Can I wake up yet?_

Richie opens his mouth to let any of the wrong questions stumble off his tongue, but before he can make a sound, a waiter bounces over to the table. He’s short and muscular and covered in glitter, and his big blue eyes stutter over Richie as his smile widens. Eddie looks like he wishes he could strangle him with his bare hands.

“Can I get you guys anything else?”

“Just water for me,” Richie pleads, taking back everything he said about drinking in moderation. If he puts a drop of alcohol on his tongue right now he’s gonna want to drown himself in it.

“A Manhattan,” Eddie orders tersely. “And a shot of your cheapest tequila.”

“Sure.” The waiter darts his eyes between them, trying to pick up some cues on what their deal is. He shrugs, either finding enough or finding that he doesn’t care. “My shift’s ending soon, so Ian’s gonna take over your table service.” He leans in, flexing a bit. “But if you need anything off the clock, I’ll be around.”

Eddie scowls, practically baring his teeth. “Great. Make it two shots of tequila.”

“Hey,” Richie starts softly as the waiter swans away. “Should you maybe not go that hard?”

He pins him with a dark look. “It’s a party. I’m partying.”

“I can see that,” Richie drawls dubiously.

“You should get in the spirit, too,” he continues stiffly. “Find that waiter and… And dance.”

Richie rolls his eyes. “I don’t want to dance with the waiter. And he’s only interested because he recognized me. Probably figured I’m one of the only ones here with more than ten dollars in my wallet. Everyone else looks twelve.”

“Right,” Eddie scoffs, pausing as the waiter comes back with their drinks. His brow hangs murderously low over his eyes as the waiter winks and slinks away, putting an extra swing in his hips. “I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that you’re handsome and funny and sweet and—”

“I feel certain he disagrees with most — if not all — of that.”

Eddie throws both his shots back in quick succession. “Shut up. You’re such an asshole.”

“Seriously Eds,” Richie starts, feeling a nervous buzz flit over his skin like a Spidey sense for gay disaster. “You’re gonna hurl if you keep chugging that shit down.”

“I need the liquid courage,” Eddie snaps. He looks like he regrets it the second he does.

As if Richie did not already look horribly unattractive and out of place as it was, he starts to sweat. “Courage for what?”

“Maybe I want to dance, too,” he says, punctuating it with a stubborn sip of his Manhattan. “There’s plenty of other guys out there if you don’t want the waiter.”

Richie heaves an exhausted sigh. “What the fuck is going on with you, Eddie? I’m not trying to get laid.”

“Why aren’t you?” He plows on ahead, ignoring Richie’s concern. “It’s fine. We’re not together, right? I don’t care.”

“It feels kind of like you do.” Richie’s voice is picking up steel as his irritation rises. “But whether you do or don’t, _I_ care.”

Eddie presses his lips flat in a thin line. “Fine. Well—” He pauses, emptying the last of the alcohol from his glass. “I’m gonna go dance with my friends. So. Do whatever you want.”

Richie watches him disappear into the crowd, feeling like he’s just been given a roundhouse kick to the face. He takes a long sip of his tepid water before standing up to get swallowed by the mass of writhing bodies. He feels like the world’s most awkward bull in a sexy china shop. The club is probably losing a whole star on Yelp from Richie’s presence alone.

But Richie finds his friends eventually, after jostling several people’s drinks and stepping on a few expensive pairs of shoes. He lets himself get suckered into standing too large and stiff while Bev and Sarah grind against him, laughing at his complete lack of fluidity. His eyes never leave Eddie though, as he takes this opportunity to sway off-beat with Ben and Mike.

He spends too long on the dance floor for someone who’s only had a splash of gin forced down his throat. He’s passed around between his friends — spun, and dipped, and promptly abandoned when they couple up. He resorts to standing awkwardly on the sidelines avoiding eye contact with Eddie.

At one point the flirtatious waiter from before tries to catch his gaze, but Richie trains his eyes steadfastly on the sticky floor. Though his good behavior only seems to agitate Eddie more. Once in a while a stranger will bump into Richie, and they’ll raise their brow in invitation, but as soon as he flashes that dismissive apologetic smile, Eddie runs to the bar.

It’s not like Eddie isn’t turning down a healthy amount of his own offers — Richie wasn’t kidding when he stood there on stage and called his ex the epitome of gay hotness. So he can’t quite figure it out, why Eddie’s so on edge. 

He almost gets the courage to ask, but Stan stumbles over with Bill in tow a little past two in the morning, panting and dripping with sweat, but wearing one hell of a smile. “Okay, I’m old. I’m tired. I want to go to bed. Are we all sufficiently satisfied that Bill and I have lived it up enough before ruining our lives with matrimony?”

Mike barks a laugh, holding Sarah against his chest like a coveted prize. “Yes. God, yes. I haven’t stayed out this late in half a decade.”

“The trick is waking up at noon,” Richie adds sagely.

Stan snorts, but Eddie seems to get impossibly more irritated. “I’m going to grab one more drink. I’ll catch up with you guys outside.”

Richie latches on to the opportunity to get him alone. “I’ll settle our million dollar tab.”

Bill frowns. “You don’t have t—”

He waves him off, already hot on Eddie’s heels. If it all it takes is a few hundred bucks worth of alcohol he didn’t even drink to figure out what the hell is going on, that’s fine and dandy to Richie. He’d hand over his whole bank account.

As Eddie puts in his last order and does his best to pretend Richie is a ghost, he squares away the bill. But he’s so distracted he can’t keep his head on straight. He’s pretty sure he tips sixty percent on an already criminal tab, but whatever. At least a glittery waiter will be going home happy, if no one else.

When the bartender sets down the Manhattan, Richie covers the top with his palm before Eddie can bring it to his mouth. “So what the fuck is up your ass tonight?”

Alright. So much for tact.

Eddie slides him a flat, unimpressed look. “What?”

Richie rolls his eyes and slides the drink away from Eddie, trying to bait him into talking, arguing, _anything_. “You seem to hate everything tonight. Or, more specifically, everything _I_ do. What am I missing? What am I fucking up here?”

“Nothing,” Eddie says through clenched teeth, reaching for the glass too slow before Richie moves it again. A ripple of anger shoots through his expression. “What do you want from me? You’re a perfect fucking gentleman.”

“Exactly!” He shouts with more accusation than the conversation really warrants. “I’m more gentlemanly than I’ve been since I was, like, eleven! But it’s like you _want_ me to mount a random guy on the dance floor.”

“Maybe I do!” If it weren’t for the booming music rattling the walls, their screaming match would certainly be turning some heads. “Because that’s what you _should_ be doing, not trailing after me with sad puppy dog eyes!”

Richie feels like someone’s playing hacky sack with his heart. “Okay… Well. Fuck you.”

“Eloquent.”

That Eddie can still run circles around him, even when he’s sloshed beyond recognition, enrages Richie to no end. “Look, even if I wasn’t still in love with you, maybe I just don’t want to hook up with some rando, alright?”

“Well that would be a fucking first.” His own words seem to devastate him, but he makes no attempts at reeling them back. “Can you just give me my drink?”

Richie grips the glass tighter, half-afraid it’s going to splinter in his hand. “No. You’ve had more than enough tonight, man.”

Eddie narrows his eyes into daggers. “Back off. You’ve been sort of sober for less than a month, I don’t think you have the room to judge.”

“And you’ve been an alcoholic for less than a day, so I think if one of us is an expert on when a drunk is about to implode, it’d be me.”

“You sanctimonious—” He gives up quickly on words, trying to wrestle the glass from Richie. Some of the amber liquid sloshes across the bartop, and Eddie growls, scrabbling to peel Richie’s fingers away.

Richie darts his free hand out, plucking the glass off the bar to bring it to his lips. He chugs back the entire Manhattan in one go, wincing at the burn.

Eddie stares at him, gobsmacked. Then his shock is morphing into a dark, dangerous determination. “Fine. I don’t need it.”

He spins on his heel to storm out, but Richie is stomping along right behind him. They arrive at the door at the same time, and a childish competitive urge has them squeezing through shoulder to shoulder. Spilling out onto the sidewalk, they stop short in front of their friends who stare back in them in confusion like some kind of displaced jury.

Ben toes forward, glancing between the two of them. “Everything okay, guys?”

Eddie takes a deep breath and locks his hand around Richie’s bicep like he’s going to push him away, but all he does is keep him in place. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you guys the last couple months.”

Clarity slams into Richie like a brick to the face. “Oh fuck. Oh, Eddie. _No_.”

“Richie and I broke up.”

There’s a tense, drawn out moment of silence. Mike’s face is the only one that doesn’t change as the others’ morph into varying expressions of shock, sympathy, and confusion. After a long while, Bev mutters a wooden, “That’s impossible,” while Stan barks over her, “What happened?”

Eddie lets go of Richie to wring his trembling hands together. “Uh. I mean, a lot happened. Like, Richie proposed to me, and then, um… He slept with some guy, and—”

It happens so fast, but it feels like it all unfolds in slow motion: Bill swings his fist forward and Richie’s head snaps back. Then he’s sprawled flat across the sidewalk as the sky seems to spin in circles above him. Pain blooms deep and aching across the bridge of his nose as blood pools around his teeth.

“What the fuck, Bill?” Stan hisses, frozen between his fiancé and his best friend like a tableau of exasperation.

Mike and Ben have their arms hooked across Bill’s chest to hold him back, but Bill is just leaning against them deflated and bowled over by shock. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Richie laughs, even though it hurts. He rolls his throbbing head to look up at Eddie. “Was this how you imagined the perfect way to break the news?”

“Obviously not!” Eddie wails, dropping to his knees to gently cup Richie’s face. He glares at Bill over his shoulder. “What the fuck, dude?”

Color rises on Bill’s cheeks. “I just reacted! I was pissed! What kind of asshole goes out and cheats after getting engaged?”

“Drunk people should never try and explain things,” Richie groans nasally, pinching the bridge of his nose to try and quell the bleeding.

“We weren’t engaged,” Eddie sharply corrects him. “I said _no_.”

A wounded sound punches out of Beverly. “Oh, Richie.”

“He didn’t know we were still together,” Eddie continues. “So can you calm the fuck down? I can handle my—” He stops abruptly, either bothered by the coppery tang of the blood staining his palms or finally experiencing the full consequences of drinking his body weight in booze. Turning as quickly as he can, he heaves over and empties his stomach next to Richie.

Why do bad things always happen to good people? Richie probably wouldn’t put himself in that category, but he’s _trying_. Things were supposed to get better when he stopped binge drinking, and splayed himself open in therapy, and let Eddie go for the greater good. He’s not supposed to be bleeding and sharing the sidewalk with puke.

“I wish I was dead,” he whines, as his vision continues to swirl.

Eddie wipes at his own mouth with his sleeve and leans over Richie. He strokes a gentle hand through Richie’s hair. “Richie baby, I’m so sorry. I—”

“Enough,” Stan cuts him off coolly, putting a hand on Eddie’s shoulder to pull them apart. “I’m going to make sure Richie doesn’t drown in his own blood, and everyone else is going to take you home.”

Bill finally shrugs Mike and Ben off. “I can help you—”

“No, you’re _definitely_ going home.” Stan’s voice is glacial. “We’ll discuss how stupid you are when I get there, and I’ll decide how mad I am based off of how hard it’s going to be to hide Richie’s fucked up face in the wedding photos.”

Richie moans for effect. “My nose is probably broken.”

Stan flicks his chilly gaze down at him. “It’s not.”

“Come on, honey,” Sarah takes Eddie’s hand to help him back up to his feet. “Stan’s got this, okay? If anyone knows how to take care of the big lug, it’s him.”

Bev sidles up to Eddie’s other side, her maternal instincts coming out in full force. “Yeah. Let’s get some water and Tums in you.”

The six of them shuffle down the sidewalk, sidestepping people with their cellphones out that are _definitely_ going to sell some _very_ embarrassing videos to TMZ in the morning. Eddie keeps glancing back, even as Mike herds him faster along. Richie wishes he could die from a moderately coordinated punch to the face.

Stan crouches next to him, concern finally furrowing his cool expression. “What the hell?”

“It’s all very terrible and complicated,” Richie assures him. He pushes himself up into a sitting position, but that just makes the blood drip faster. “Damn.”

Ever prepared, Stan pulls out a tissue and starts dabbing at Richie’s face. “How long?”

“Emily’s birthday.”

Stan gives one of his patented long-suffering sighs. “How have you survived this long with such terrible decision making skills?” 

“I think there’s a god somewhere that enjoys watching my suffering too much to let me die.” Richie straightens his glasses, finally able to focus on Stan’s face. “But it’s not so bad. The Eddie thing, I mean. It’s… I’m surviving.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Stan tosses the tissue aside to squeeze Richie’s hand in his. “I know I’ve been kind of absorbed in my stupid wedding stuff, but—”

“That’s not why. I—” Richie huffs a sad, humorless laugh. It’d be easy enough to shoulder the blame on Eddie’s request for the time to figure it out, but he knows that, ultimately, that’s not true, either. “I probably kept it from you for the same reason Eddie told you now: ‘cause you would’ve made sure the two of us didn’t keep leaning on each other.”

Stan frowns, rising to pull Richie up to his feet after him. “Despite how you might act most of the time, you’re a grown man. I don’t want you to feel like you have to isolate yourself because you think I’m going to tell you what to do. Obviously I want to protect you — I can’t help that — but I’m always on your side. No matter what dumb decision you make.”

Richie flashes a red grin that makes Stan cringe. “You’re my best guy, Staniel.”

“I think we both know I’m you’re second best.”

“Maybe.” He leans on Stan as they start down the sidewalk, because he hasn’t quite got his bearings yet. “Fuck. I think Billy knocked a screw loose.”

Annoyance twists at Stan’s lips. “I don’t know what machismo demon tricked my fiancé into thinking he should behave like a total barbarian.”

“Don’t give him too hard of a time,” Richie counters, feeling a little bad that the mess of his own creation is starting to spread to his friends. “He was just being protective, too.”

Stan rolls his eyes, but Richie can see the glimmer in them that speaks to hidden affection. “I’ll give him as much of a hard time as I want. He’ll sit there and take my carefully calculated lecture like a man, and then we’ll probably have weird sex about it later.”

“Oh… I’d like to know less.”

Throwing his head back in a laugh, Stan jostles Richie just to hear him groan. “Seriously? Did I out trash the Trashmouth? You’re going soft in your old age.”

Richie can’t help a small smile, even if his life is a steaming pile of garbage. “That’s the damn truth.”

“Hey,” Stan stops, turning to Richie with renewed seriousness. “Are you going to be okay being my best man this weekend? It might get emotional up there with Eddie, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to do it if it’s going to cause you unnecessary pain.”

“I appreciate the thought.” He pauses, a sticky ball of feelings lodged in his throat. “But shove it up your ass, Stanley. The only thing that’s going to keep me from standing next to my best friend on his wedding day is death. And frankly, Bill doesn’t punch hard enough to get the job done.”

“I’ll give him your notes,” Stan drawls, but Richie doesn’t fail to notice that he’s getting choked up, too.

—————————————————

Richie doesn’t want to give Bill more credit than he deserves, but post-fist-to-the-face Richie is different. Or maybe it’s Eddie that deserves the credit, taking the leap and ripping off the band-aid for both of them. Maybe he gets a little bit of credit himself, too, for finally being able to exhale the breath he’s been holding since that awful night three months ago.

Things suddenly feel clear and simple. His life is no longer clouded over by a foggy haze of denial and despair. No, the new path in front of him is the sum of a simple set of facts: It still hurts when he smiles, but the bruise on his mouth is easy enough to cover with Bev’s concealer. Everything he’s ever built for himself is in New York City, but if he ever wants to be something _more_ — wants to be a person that feels proud and at home in his own skin — then he has to take that chance and move to Los Angeles. And when it comes to Eddie, he gets one more day.

One more day of loving him before he lets go for good. One more day of waiting on bated breath to hear his laughter, and crossing his fingers hoping that he’s the reason for it all the while. One more day of inventing reasons to touch him. Of trying to rile him up just for the sake of his eyes on him.

That’s it.

They haven’t seen much of each other since the bachelor party fiasco. Richie knows that’s largely in part to their friends. Despite all the wedding tasks piling up the closer they get to the big day, Richie and Eddie are somehow never around each other for very long. They hover stiff and nervous at rehearsals, but the second their obligations to stand less than a yard apart are finished, someone is pulling them in opposite directions.

Small fires pop up, but what once might have been a simple fix turns into a strategically orchestrated reshuffling. When the flower delivery is mis-scheduled, Eddie is sent to the florist to pick them up with Mike, even though Mike’s allergies turn him into a snivelling mess. When Richie protests that he should go in his place, Bev insists that she needs his help with the centerpieces, even though Richie knows that the second he’s finished she’s going to redo all of his hard work.

The times when Richie steps off the elevator as Eddie just happens to be leaving his apartment with Penny, Bill pops out of the apartment between them as if he was listening at the door. He fills the space with profuse apologies for the state of Richie’s face, wild worries about the wedding, and on one memorable occasion, an extremely thorough and implausible point by point outline of a book Richie is pretty sure he isn’t writing.

But Eddie always looks like he has something on his mind, and Richie always wants to know what it is.

Ultimately, it probably shouldn’t matter. Probably can’t matter. Because Richie has already called up Gary and told him to accept the Showtime offer. In a couple of months he’s West Coast bound, and Eddie will just be someone he’ll pretend he can forget.

—————————————————

Richie watches Stan straighten his tie in the mirror, grounded by a calming sense of symmetry. Standing for measurements at the tailor three months ago had been that very first spark of trouble inside of Richie. He supposes putting on the suit and stepping away from all of that mess is a bit like closing the circle. At least they’ve got a definitive answer on who’s the better couple now.

“Are you nervous?”

“No,” Stan answers simply. “I’ve never been more ready for anything in my entire life.”

A watery smile overtakes Richie’s face — part joy, and part regret that he’s going to miss so much of this new part of Stan’s life. “I knew you were gonna marry Bill the second you told me about him.”

He laughs, turning away from the mirror with every inch of himself impeccably put together. “Really? I didn’t.”

Richie claps Stan on the back. “That’s gotta be in the top ten most romantic things ever said on someone’s wedding day.”

“Mmm,” he hums, reaching out to button Richie’s suit jacket. “I think it is romantic, though. If you look at someone for the first time and see exactly what life has in store for you, where’s the fun in that? I like surprises.”

“You’re so full of shit, Stanley! Historically, you’ve been a pretty big nemesis to surprises.”

Stan smirks and flicks his gaze up to meet Richie’s, that hard-edged affection in his eyes that always made him Richie’s best friend. “I like _his_ surprises.”

A squeak escapes up through Richie’s throat, and he clamps a hand down over his mouth to keep it inside. Stan’s mouth splits open into the grin of a boy twenty-five years younger. “Don’t cry on me yet, you big sap. It’s going to be a long day.”

Good. He wants this day to last forever. He wants it to get locked in some kind of time loop — like _Groundhog Day_ without the suicidal montage. But if he can’t have that, he’ll make every ticking second count.

He follows after Stan to go sign the ketubah. Bill and Stan are certainly a sight together — Bill in his crisp light gray suit and Stan in his softer charcoal. Their faces when they see each other for the first time are earth-shattering: relieved that the person they love came through to stand beside them today, fiercely determined to take life by the horns together, and full of so much deep and intimate affection that it makes Richie’s teeth rot.

When Richie sees Eddie for the first time, it’s like that shattered earth is consumed by the sun. The two of them are in suits of matching inky black, but Richie thinks that Eddie cuts a far more handsome figure — leanly muscled and sharply angled. Their smiles match too, curling with a shy, warm nostalgia.

Through the whole process, their eyes keep finding each other like magnets. As they sign the ketubah as witnesses. As they finish the processional to stand on opposite sides of the chuppah. Through all the beautiful blessings and sappy vows. When Stan and Bill kiss, Richie waggles his eyebrows, and Eddie has to bite down hard on his lip not to laugh.

Then Stan and Bill are smashing glasses beneath their feet, and the room erupts in cheers and singing. As the happy couple disappears back down the aisle and the wedding guests shift and rise, Eddie and Richie gravitate toward each other’s sides. Their shoulders bump, and the gesture feels no less intimate to Richie than the previous moment’s nuptials.

Richie can't keep the grin off his face. The joy washes over him in waves, cresting and crashing and rising all over again.

He and Eddie drift apart as they mold with the crowd, but as the guests trickle out to head toward the reception, Richie feels a strong hand wrap around his wrist. He doesn’t have much time to register his initial shock before he’s yanked toward a utility closet and his surprise is doubled. The dangling beaded light cord clacks against his glasses, and then the hand locked around his wrist releases him to tug at the string and flood the cramped space with yellow light.

The compact closet washes them with a sallow glow, but Eddie still looks like something straight out of Richie’s fantasies. “Come here often?”

“Idiot,” Eddie grins. “You’re a hard man to get alone. Our friends are all over us like Central Park pigeons.”

“Careful. You know better than to mention birds when Stan is in the building — he gets too excited.”

He rolls his eyes, and when he lifts his hand Richie instinctively flinches back, expecting to get another fist to the face. But he just gently presses the tips of his fingers to Richie’s chin, tilting him down to get a good look at him. “Does it hurt?”

“Only when I move my mouth.”

Eddie quirks a brow. “So… always?”

Richie breathes a shaky laugh, carefully lowering Eddie’s hand. “Not that I don’t appreciate starting a few good rumors at a wedding, but what’s with the hide and seek?”

“Where do I even start?” Eddie mutters. “I spent so long trying to fabricate a reason to be around you that I didn’t really prepare for the conversation.”

“I get that a lot.”

Even through the stiff material of his dress shirt, Eddie manages to pinch the skin along Richie’s ribs. It’s like a secret power. “I never meant for you to get hurt. Physically, I mean. Not that I _wanted_ to hurt you emotionally, I just knew it would probably happen no matter what, and— Bill shouldn’t have punched you, is what I’m trying to say. And I’m sorry that it was my fault.”

Richie shrugs. “Bill’s a big boy. He makes his own dumb choices, just like we do.”

Eddie growls under his breath, the conversation clearly having gone off the rails. “Look, stop being so pleasant and agreeable. I’m trying to say I made a mistake.”

“Fine,” Richi answers agreeably, just to watch Eddie’s eye twitch. “It was kind of dumb, but the intentions were good. I understand why you felt like you had to do it. The whole ‘ _waiting until the last minute and getting trashed_ ’ thing really made it more dramatic than it should have been, but otherwise you were on the right track.”

“I’m not talking about—”

The door opens suddenly, and a very disgruntled maintenance man blinks back at them. “You two lost? You’re not supposed to be in here.”

Richie smooths the front of his suit as he steps out, maintaining an air of dignity he rarely has. “Come on, man. Don’t you know you’re not supposed to drag guys out of the closet?”

“ _Richie_ ,” Eddie hisses, scurrying after him to clutch at his forearm even as the worker is already moving on with his life. “Cool it with the jokes. I don’t want to end up in some prison in Maine.”

“Jesus. It’s not Thailand, Eddie. And I really don’t think a janitor is going to slap some cuffs on us for having a bizarrely located conversation… Unless you ask nicely, maybe.”

“You’re the worst,” he groans, in the way that usually means he’s trying his hardest not to laugh. “Let’s be serious for two seconds, okay? I was in the middle of telling you something important.”

Bev’s head pops out of the wide double doors to the reception hall, and her eyes narrow on them before she lets an overly bright smile bare her teeth. “There you two are! Not getting in any trouble, I hope?”

Richie shoots Eddie a crooked apologetic smile before Beverly bounds over to get her acrylic claws in him. “You wound me, Miss Marsh. I’m a God-fearing churchgoer like the rest of you.”

And maybe Richie’s plan to quietly pine from afar isn’t going according to plan, but Eddie looks like he’s about to pop a vein. Their friends’ machinations over the last couple of days seem to have doubled in the presence of a hyper-romantic atmosphere. Bev, Mike, and Sarah take turns performing conversational feats and physical contortions to keep them as disengaged from each other as possible, while Ben looks on like an exhausted father of three.

As they sit down at dinner, Richie and Eddie are pulled down to opposite sides of the table to be buffered by a couple on either side of them. Just to be contrary — and a little to watch the way it makes his cheeks flush — Richie starts stretching his long leg beneath to table to tap his toe against Eddie’s. Eddie taps back, knocking higher up at his ankle and tugging at the hem of his pants. They go on like that for half the main course, and they might’ve gotten away with their footsie, too, if Eddie didn’t start to beam that million dollar smile.

Beverly twists Richie’s chair to face her and pulls him into an irresistible conversation about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it’s not long before they’re back at their nonsense again.

“The caterer must have liked you better,” Richie mumbles with performative hostility as they head back to their table after nabbing some cake. “Your slice is bigger.”

“Are you twelve years old? Why does it matter?” He glances down at the plate in his hands, getting even more riled up. “And it’s exactly the same!”

“How do you know?” Richie taunts. “Did you bring a measuring tape?”

“Did _you_?”

A smile wobbles at Richie’s stern affectation. “I have an eye for cake, Eddie. I know what I’m talking about.”

Eddie pinches off a corner of his cake and smears it across Richie’s chin. “Is that better?”

“Yes,” Richie dissolves into giggles. “I’ll take anything to the face in the name of equality.”

Any retort Eddie might have had is cut off as Sarah steps slickly between them with a napkin in each hand. “Making a mess boys?”

Later, Richie can’t help himself when Stan and Bill move to the center of the room to share their first dance as a married couple. Their bodies are curled around each other, and _Your Song_ drifts through the speakers. He coughs a laugh into his palm and leans across the table to mutter, “Oh good, they’re reasserting the fact that they’re gay. Someone might’ve forgotten.”

Eddie’s eyes light up like sparklers — that gremlin glimmer that means Eds is about to get off a real good one. But Bev knocks a glass of water over, and it works like a pail of ice to the face. The spell is broken.

They reach the height of ridiculousness when Richie stands up to go to the bathroom. Mike hops to his feet, too, offering a quick, “I’ll keep you company.”

“What the fuck for?” Richie laughs in his face. “Are you gonna hold it for me? Or are we going to bitch about boys like a couple of drunk sorority girls?”

Mike reluctantly eases back down into his chair. “Well…”

“I’m not going to flirt with Eddie while I’m taking a piss,” he assures. Their mouths pinch with embarrassment, as if they thought they were ever being coy. “I’ll be back in two seconds.”

Of course, Eddie isn’t a fool. In fact, he’s probably calculated every probability of success since the wedding started. So when Richie exits the restroom, Eddie steps out of the shadows, drawling, “Fancy seeing you here.”

Richie almost jumps out of his own skin. “Oh shit. How’d you get away from the helicopter parents?”

“Ben helped.” Ah, an alliance. Even more clever than Richie thought. “Bev was on duty, but he staged a phone call from his mom about Emily.”

As if he were the Grinch up on his icy hilltop, Richie’s heart grows three sizes. “He’s going to be in so much trouble when she finds out.”

“Oh, beyond belief.” Eddie herds him back towards the ballroom. “So why don’t we make it count? Dance with me.”

“Dance?” Richie splutters. “You want to dance with _me_?”

“Who else?” Eddie asks warmly, lacing their fingers to lead him to the dance floor.

Richie feels like a nervous teenager at a middle school dance. He knows his palms are sweating, and he wonders if Eddie wants to pull away — if he’s disgusted but holding on to be polite. In a fit of insecurity, Richie tries to slip his hand away, but Eddie holds fast, tugging him along with more insistence.

Eddie finds a prime spot in the middle where they’re sufficiently obscured by the other guests so none of their nosy friends can try to pry them apart. He beams as Elvis Presley’s _Can’t Help Falling in Love_ starts to croon from the speakers, and he hooks his arms over Richie’s broad shoulders to clasp his fingers behind his neck.

“I’m— Shit, I’m really not good at much else besides shuffling on my feet.” He raises tentative hands to Eddie’s hips. “Is this okay?”

He rolls his eyes, sporting an impish smile. “Where else would you put them?”

Richie almost chokes on the joke that springs to his tongue. He dials it back, but can’t resist a watered down, “Boy, if you had asked me that three months ago…”

Eddie laughs, toeing forward to lessen the space between them to a dangerous degree. This has to be a dream. With the painfully romantic mood music, and their tangled bodies, and the laughter. Richie had promised himself one more day, but he never imagined it would be like _this_.

“This isn’t exactly as alone as I wanted us,” Eddie admits. “But I think it’s the best we’re going to get, given the circumstances.”

Fear spikes through Richie’s gut. What more could they possibly reveal to each other? What layers are left to strip away? Richie’s feeling raw and exposed enough, he wouldn’t survive another blow. “You gonna murder me, Eds? At least you waited until after they cut the cake.”

Eddie gently presses the tip of a finger over Richie’s lips. “Did you know Ben proposed to Beverly ten times?”

“It was nine, last time I heard,” he mumbles around the soft pressure against his mouth.

He drops his hand, huffing a laugh. “The man is certifiably insane, but I think he might also have the best clarity out of anyone I’ve ever known. He knows what he wants — what makes his life worth living — and no matter how afraid he is, he puts everything he has into getting it.”

“Is this… Are you saying I didn’t propose _enough_? Because I’m getting a lot of confusing messages, and—” Richie stops short as Eddie cups his jaw between both hands.

“I need you to stop nervously word vomiting if I’m going to have any hope of getting through this, okay?” At Richie’s nod, Eddie smiles softly. “After the bachelor party, Ben showed up at my door with some coffee and conversation. He told me about his whole thing with Bev, and how it doesn’t matter how long she makes him wait to make it official, because words are just words. They’re a family whether they call each other husband and wife, or not.”

Richie tries to keep his mouth shut. He really does. “I’m sorry, dude, I’m so lost right now.”

“I’m an asshole,” Eddie proclaims, fingers curling around Richie’s biceps like he’s holding on for dear life. “And I’m sorry, Richie. I’m so, so sorry. There is so much bullshit in my life that I should’ve left in the dust years ago, and I just got scared and ran from the one thing I should’ve been holding on to.”

“...What?”

“You’re there for me whenever I’m at the end of my rope. You know how to make me feel like I’m strong and important in ways that no one else can even come close to. And Christ, when Bill punched you I wanted to rip him in half. I want to protect you, and support you, and take care of you. We have to constantly remind ourselves not to fall into bed with each other, and we say ‘I love you’ like it’s a casual greeting. We might say we broke up, but putting those words out there isn’t the same as actually doing it.”

Richie is starting to consider that maybe this is actually a nightmare, instead. “You’re right. Fuck, I know, okay? And I know that’s why you had the whole bachelor party meltdown, because you knew that I’m not strong enough to walk away on my own. But I will. I am. I just wanted one more day to—”

“I don’t want one more day!”

A hot, queasy shame slithers around in his intestines. He’s going to puke. He’s always been an emotional barfer. Oh god, he’s so humiliated he’s going to have an aneurism, and then he’s going to blow chunks all over his own corpse.

Richie turns on his heel to run away — to the bathroom, or to fresh air, or to maybe never stop until his legs give out — but Eddie locks his hand around his wrist. He tugs him forward and drags him down by the collar, crashing their lips together as soon as the music makes an abrupt shift to _Dancing Queen_.

If he weren’t so gobsmacked, Richie might laugh. As it is, he stands there stiff and frozen as Eddie licks his tongue into his mouth. His body is begging at him to melt into it and screaming at him to pull away, but all he can do is stand there like a fool as he’s kissed within an inch of his life.

Eddie’s cheeks are flushed with an anxious embarrassment as he pulls away, but his eyes flash with determination. “I want all the days,” he says, raising his voice to be heard over the upbeat music. “We’re boyfriends, and I want to keep it that way. What do you think?”

“I… What about all that stuff about us not being able to help each other?”

“We can’t,” Eddie shrugs. “Not all the time. You can’t fix all of my problems for me, but that doesn’t mean I have to be alone to get my life together. I can be independent and let myself have love. You are the first thing I ever got to choose, Richie. And it’s the best choice I’ve ever made.”

Richie feels like he’s been kicked in the chest by a horse. His hands fly up to tangle in his own hair, pulling until it hurts. “Eddie, I can’t do this.”

His face falls, but he doesn’t look surprised. “It’s okay. I figured I might be too late. That’s fair. You can only jerk a person around for so long before… It doesn’t matter. I just wanted you to know how I felt. That you mean the world to me, and—”

“Stop talking,” Richie begs. He’s the one who grabs Eddie this time, snaking through the crowd to leave the ballroom and exit the building out the quiet side entrance he’d scoped out earlier in the event that he’d need to slink away for a smoke.

“You don’t have to explain yourself,” Eddie murmurs softly, now that the only thing around them is the crisp and quiet air of Bangor. “I respect your decision.”

Richie presses Eddie against the brick, pinning him in place with his hands on his chest and the wild look in his eyes. “Eddie, I love you. I’d cut off my own hand if it meant I got to be with you. But I’m moving to Los Angeles.”

“You’re what?” He looks abruptly green around the gills, and Richie holds onto him tighter as his knees seem to go weak.

“Gary got me this insane new series on Showtime. I mean, like, a legitimate starring role. Like it’s _my_ show. It’s the kind of thing that could turn my whole life around.”

A shaky pride softens Eddie’s face. “That’s fucking amazing!” He pulls Richie into a fierce hug. “You deserve this. You’re so incredible.”

Richie clings to him like they’re going down with the Titanic. “Eddie, my chest hurts. I feel like I’m dying.”

Eddie pulls back only as far as he needs to — and as far as Richie will let him — to look at his face. He strokes softly down Richie’s neck, soothing him like a cornered dog. “What’s wrong?”

“I wouldn’t have taken the job if I’d known we might’ve gotten back together.”

“Yes, you would have,” Eddie says with more certainty than Richie has for anything in his life. “You’re getting opportunities that you’ve busted your ass for. That you’ve earned. That you’ve been scared to let yourself have. This is your life! This is _everything_.”

“Not everything,” Richie gasps, sucking in shallow breaths as he stumbles back against the wall and slides down to sit on the ground.

Eddie wastes no time in dropping down next to him, his suit be damned. He plants a hand on either side of Richie’s face and forces him to look at him. “You’re doing the right thing. And I know that you know that. And I’m so, _so_ proud of you. For everything.”

Richie gives a wet, sniffling laugh. “I hate this. I hate that everything keeps getting harder. I hate that it doesn’t even matter if it’s the best times or the worst times, I just keep discovering all these new and intense ways to feel with you, and I just… It sucks that you’ve done all this before, you know? Because I feel like a kid at his first Christmas with you, and… I don’t know, I feel like I’m just your average Tuesday in, like, May.”

Eddie shifts abruptly, plopping himself down in Richie’s lap and tangling his fingers in his hair so there’s nowhere to look but at each other. “You think I’ve ever felt this way before?”

“Haven’t you?” He asks a little uncertainly, caught between overwhelming emotion and a surprise thrum of arousal.

“Not once,” Eddie says with a gravity that could move statues. “I haven’t felt one iota of what we have with anyone else. Myra was an exercise in delusion, and any other guy I’d fucked around with was a stepping stone to being right here with you. Don’t think for one second that anyone even begins to compare. You’re new territory, baby.”

Tipping forward, Richie buries his face against Eddie’s chest. “You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Eddie Kaspbrak.”

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Richie Tozier.”

Richie tilts his face up to drop a kiss to the underside of Eddie’s jaw, desperate to feel any point of skin on skin. “God, standing through that wedding today, all I could think about was how I thought that could’ve been us. Or how we could have even had what Ben and Bev have. But we fucked it up, man. We fucked it up like it was our job.”

“We could never be like them,” Eddie says softly, dropping a smattering of pecks to Richie’s forehead. “Because we’re not Stan and Bill. We’re not Ben and Bev. And what we have is different, and it’s beautiful, and I don’t want to try and be like anybody else. We’re both fuck ups, but we fuck up together. I love our fucked up life.”

“But we—”

“Ask me to come with you.”

Richie rears back. “What?”

“Ask me to move to L.A. with you.” It’s almost an order, with the way his hand tightens in Richie’s curls.

Richie swallows with an audible click. “You have a whole life in New York, Eddie.”

“I have a life that other people made for me. I want to make my own. And I want to make it with you, if you’ll have me.”

Shaking like a leaf with Parkinson’s, Richie paws at Eddie like he’s trying to make sure he won’t evaporate into a cloud of dream smoke. “I— Of course I’ll have you. Fucking duh. Oh my God. What the fuck. Are you _sure_?”

Eddie barks a bright and weightless laugh. He leans in, bumping their noses. “Tell you what, why don’t you ask me again in the morning?”

“In the— _Oh_.” Eddie’s hand has dipped between them, massaging at the bulge growing in Richie’s pants. “Fuck.”

An amused hum pours out of Eddie’s throat like honey. “You think you can make it back to the hotel, baby?”

Richie pushes Eddie off of him like he’s a useless sack of potatoes. He scrambles to his feet and starts booking it down the street.

Once Eddie recovers from his fit of laughter, he’s after him like a shot.

—————————————————

They crash onto the bed with a _thump_ , almost bouncing right off onto the floor with the force of it. Richie is laughing like a loon as Eddie crawls over him on his hands and knees. He feels giddy with it all. Feels like a teenager who snuck out to neck with the bad boy next door. Like a virgin on his wedding night.

“Are we doing this?” He asks with an urgency tempered only by an all-consuming sense of _rightness_. His hands are everywhere over Eddie, drinking in the heat of him through his clothes, squeezing at the meat of his hips.

Eddie leans his weight back on Richie’s thighs as he sits up to whip his suit jacket off. “I want to. I want you. But if we do this, we’re really doing this, right?”

Richie leans up after him, pressing soft, lingering kisses to his lips as he undoes his tie and threads it through his collar. “ _Yes_. I’m still all yours, babe.”

With a moan stuck deep in his throat, Eddie wrestles out of his shirt, sending a stubborn button flying. “Good,” he breathes, pressing Richie back flat against the mattress. “I missed you so much.”

“Missed you,” he agrees, arching his back as Eddie pushes and pulls at his clothes to bare his torso, too. “Fuck, I want you so bad.”

Eddie dips in to drag their chests together, feeling that instant spark of skin on skin. “Trying to stay away from you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

“We weren’t very good at it,” Richie laughs, planting his feet flat on the bed to roll his hips up into Eddie. “We failed on multiple occasions.”

The humor is punched from his lungs as Eddie steals his lips in a bruising kiss. It’s sloppy with teeth and tongue, fueled by the singular drive of need. He twists Richie’s hair around his fingers, tight at the scalp, holding his head back taut to tip up his chin and lengthen the column of his neck.

“No more self-destructive sex with random guys,” Eddie demands, voice balanced firmly on the junction of serious and smoldering. “Don’t even blink at another man unless you’re holding my death certificate or a signed affidavit that we’re no longer together.”

Richie writhes under him, just to feel the sharp tug at his hairline. “No more running away when you’re overwhelmed. Or I’ll throw every pair of shoes you own into the La Brea tar pit.”

“And we have to actually talk to each other when we’re freaking out.” His face is disproportionately earnest for the boner stabbing Richie in the stomach.

“Yeah,” Richie agrees, coasting his hands over the sculpted muscles of Eddie’s abdomen. “It’s okay to be scared. It’s not okay to hide it.”

“Got it,” Eddie nods. “Anything else?”

“No. You?”

“No. I think we can handle everything else.”

Eddie sucks Richie’s lower lip into his mouth, biting softly in a silent promise to uphold his end of the deal. Richie groans and splays his thighs open around him, meeting him in the middle with his own promise. It feels legally binding. It feels deeper than that, too — like there’s a charge in the air and their love has seeped through the hotel foundations to bleed into the earth. Like a promise that satisfies more than mortal bones.

In the middle of tossing their pants aside, Richie starts to helplessly titter with laughter. At Eddie’s incredulous look, he breaks even further. “S-sorry. _Sorry_. It’s just, I think that cheesy wedding DJ got to me. It feels like there should be a soundtrack for this, or something.”

A prime, grade ‘A’ dork smile crinkles Eddie’s nose. “God, honestly. I feel like _Unchained Melody_ is going to start lilting through the walls.”

“ _Oh, my love_ ,” Richie croons in a syrupy sweet voice, pushing the boxer briefs off Eddie’s hips. “ _My darling, I’ve hungered for your touch_...”

Dropping sweet, reverent pecks down Richie’s chest, Eddie can’t help but to snicker against the warm, soft skin. They haven’t laughed like this in so long — haven’t felt such simple joy like this in even longer. Knowing what it’s like without it, it’s something Richie would go to war for.

Eddie looks up the long line of Richie’s body, catching his eye as he playfully flicks his tongue into the dip of his bellybutton. “I want to fuck you.”

Richie’s eyes practically cross as his hands fly to Eddie’s shoulders. They don’t do it like this often, mostly because Richie has trouble getting out of his head long enough to let someone else take control. When he does concede whatever perceived power he thinks comes with it, it’s almost always overwhelming. Sometimes it feels like seeing the face of God, and other times it feels like he’s being crushed by a steamroller. There are times where he thinks he’s prepared enough for it and he _still_ has a panic attack halfway through.

But now that Eddie’s put the thought between them, Richie wants it like a man possessed. He wants to feel him all over. He wants to break apart around him. “Do it.”

Eddie’s pupils are dark and fat as he slinks back up Richie’s body. “Yeah?” He scrapes his nails through the trail of dark hair on Richie’s stomach, diving in to mouth at the side of his throat like he’s an irresistible temptation. “That’s okay?”

“Yes,” he gasps. He reaches down to wrap a hand around Eddie’s hot, hard length, quaking at the thought of having it inside of him. “Oh god, _please_.”

Eddie strokes a hand across Richie’s forehead, searching his eyes for any hint of apprehension. While Richie appreciates the consideration, patience hasn’t suddenly become his strong suit. He slides his hand over him in slow, firm tugs, thumbing at the head to make his shoulders hunch with a groan.

“ _Okay_ ,” he sharply agrees, pulling Richie’s hand off of him and pinning it to the mattress in a fit of desperation. Richie’s lashes flutter, and Eddie drops a kiss to the tip of his nose. “Get the lube.”

Richie twists around onto his stomach, reaching toward the bedside table for Eddie’s toiletry bag. He’s barely got it unzipped when Eddie jerks his briefs off with enough force to drag him halfway across the mattress.

“Oh shit.” He army crawls back over to the bag and scrabbles around the bottom of it uselessly. He can’t think — Eddie is nipping wet, biting kisses across the broad plain of his back, sliding his hands down to massage at the globes of his ass. “That feels good.”

He barely registers the devilish grin pressed against the small of his back before Eddie is spreading his legs and swiping his tongue between his cheeks. His whole brain whites out, and he moans loud and long into his own bicep to try and muffle the sound. All he really succeeds at is drooling all over himself. With a throaty grunt he wiggles back against Eddie with no leverage.

“I’ve got you,” Eddie murmurs, voice rough and dark. He pushes and pulls at Richie, and Richie just follows his lead, still too dumb from the shock of his tongue on him. When Eddie finally gets his knees under him and his hips raised, he dives right back in. He digs his nails into Richie’s pale thighs as he licks into him, loving the way they quiver under his hands.

“ _Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck_.” Richie rocks back onto Eddie’s quick, slippery tongue, dragging his face back and forth over the damp patch of saliva he’s panting into the sheets. Eddie slips the tip of his finger inside of him, flicking teasingly around his rim with his tongue. “Fuck!”

Eddie laughs, but tears spring to Richie’s eyes as he pulls his mouth away. He doesn’t go far, though, just reaches for the toiletry bag Richie abandoned for pleasure and upends it on the mattress. He snaps up the travel-sized bottle of lube and a condom and brushes the rest of the razors, moisturizers, and oddities to the floor.

He presses one finger slowly into him, trying not to bowl him over with too much too fast. Richie’s shaking like a leaf as Eddie sucks a kiss to the base of his spine, and he can’t tell if it’s because he’s out of his mind or too far in it. “You okay, Rich?”

“I’m so fucking good,” he mumbles, glasses creaking with how hard they’re being pressed into the mattress. His knees spread further apart, straining at the muscles so he can sink deeper around Eddie’s finger. “Gimme more.”

“You sure?”

A shuddering groan rips from deep in Richie’s chest as he reaches between his legs to jerk himself with quick flicks of his wrist. Eddie brings a palm down on the side of Richie’s ass — sharp, but gentle — and Richie gives a keening whine as he releases his length to tangle his fingers in the sheets. Eddie spanks him again, just to watch his back bow.

“ _Please_.”

Eddie coats his fingers in more lube and presses two inside of him, deliberately avoiding his prostate. Richie swivels his hips, trying to chase his own pleasure, but Eddie palms his ass with his free hand to keep him in place. “God, you’re so sexy.”

“Shut up,” he whines, a burning flush painting his skin red.

“I don’t think I will,” Eddie laughs. He pulls his fingers out and flips Richie over onto his back. “I like seeing you like this, all slutty and dick drunk.”

“ _Guh_ ,” Richie offers intelligently. “Just give it to me.”

Eddie smiles softly as he straightens Richie’s glasses. “You’re not being very patient.”

“No shit,” he huffs. “I lost all my patience when you put your tongue in my ass.”

“We have all the time in the world,” Eddie drawls, tearing open the condom and sliding it slowly down his shaft. Richie’s eyes are hot on him, his whole body vibrating.

“We’ll see how patient you are when it’s been half a year since _you’ve_ gotten railed.”

Eddie wraps one of Richie’s legs around his waist and hooks the other one over his shoulder, dropping a kiss to the side of his knee. “You make a good point. I should play fair — my baby always delivers.”

He lets Richie finally ( _finally_!) take him in hand and guide him to his entrance. With the slightest bit of pressure he’s slipping inside, and Richie lets out a relieved breath like he never thought it was possible. Eddie rolls his hips forward with a slow drag, drawing out the first push in to string Richie taut beneath him.

“Jesus,” Richie’s voice wavers. He darts his tongue out to wet his lips, eyes dropping closed as he leans into the sensation. “Why don’t we do this every day of our lives?”

“Because you cry and we both freak out,” Eddie murmurs fondly. He pulls almost all the way out and thrusts back in — gently, but Richie still squeezes his knees on either side of him. “I only ask to do it when I know you’re probably going to cry anyway.”

Richie tries to pout, but it doesn’t really work when he can barely keep his jaw from falling open with each rock of Eddie’s hips. “Maybe— _Uh_ , fuck. Maybe I’d stop crying every time if you fucked me on the regular.”

“I’ll fuck you anytime you want,” Eddie promises. He peels Richie’s fingers off his waist to thread them through his before pinning the backs of his hands against the mattress. Richie flexes against him, testing his strength, and he flushes with interest at the lack of give. Eddie picks up his pace, putting his back into as he continues, “I’ll fuck you until you can’t think straight.”

The dazed look on Richie’s face says that he’s already past thinking straight, but when he opens his mouth he just barks out an urgent, “Fuck me harder, Eddie.”

So he does. His hips piston forward, nailing his prostate with a brutal rhythm. As his teeth close around Richie’s shoulder, Richie seems to be doing his best to scream himself hoarse. They’ll be lucky if they get a noise complaint from hotel management rather than a uniformed officer banging down their door.

Eddie releases his grip from one of Richie’s hands to pull roughly at the hair curling wildly at the top of his skull. His head jerks back and his mouth curves in an open ‘o’ as he tapers his raucous moans off into a throaty whimper. With all the desperation of a twelve year old trying to race his alarm clock in the morning, Richie drops his newly free hand to beat his shaft at a frantic pace.

“Are you gonna come?” Eddie growls against the underside of his jaw, jostling his head with his grip on his hair and goading him along. “I wanna feel you.”

“Yes, _fuck_ , yes!” And tears are springing to Richie’s eyes, pouring hot down his pink cheeks. “I’m so close.”

He hammers into him, squeezing their bound hands as he feels himself teeter closer to the edge, too. “What you want, baby? What do you need?”

Richie darts forward to try and catch Eddie’s lips in a kiss, and — in lieu of bringing out the lecture about the devastatingly unsanitary practice of meeting someone’s mouth after exploring their ass with your tongue — Eddie clamps his palm over Richie’s greedy lips. The domineering move seems to really do it for Richie, because his eyes are rolling back in his head, he’s practically squealing against the meat of Eddie’s palm, and he’s coming in thick stripes between them.

“Fucking hell,” Eddie gasps as Richie clenches around him. “Can I—”

“ _Yefph_ ,” Richie grunts sloppily into the muffle of Eddie’s hand, clawing at his rolling hips to keep him moving.

After half a dozen more off-tempo thrusts, Eddie’s orgasm hits him with a wave of heat. He groans into Richie’s neck, shuddering and clutching his ribcage hard enough to leave faint bruises. Richie’s not complaining. He likes it.

It takes Richie’s brain a long while to come back online, absolutely fried from sex that’s probably in his top five romps of all time, if he had to count (which he doesn’t, but he is). Even despite the embarrassment of another wave of tears wracking his body.

Eddie rolls off of Richie, brow creasing in concern. “You good?”

“No,” Richie sniffles. “I’m dead. You gave it to me so good my heart stopped.”

Eddie lazily swats his chest. “Dick. I was actually worried for half a second.”

“Sorry.” He pokes shyly at Eddie’s arm. “Can you, uh… Can you go brush your teeth so we can make out some more?”

Eddie heaves off the bed with a put upon groan, but Richie knows he doesn’t really mind. In fact, he watches him pad to the bathroom with a smile. And if Richie starts to cry all over again as they trade minty-fresh kisses, then Eddie will never tell. At least, not until Richie gives him enough reason to.

—————————————————

At seven o’clock, Eddie’s cellphone blares with its typical alarm. Eddie groans at the disturbance of peace, but Richie is already wide awake. His sleep had been fitful all night — if he could call the snatches of rest he managed “sleep,” anyway.

Eddie tenses in shock when he opens his eyes to see Richie leaning over him. In the same motion that he stretches out his aching muscles, he pushes Richie away by the face. “You’re such a creep.”

Richie would leer at the accusation, but he’s too eager. “It’s the morning.”

“Yeah, what gave that away, dumbass? The sun shining through the curtains to burn my retinas?”

He rolls on top of Eddie, as naked as last night’s debauchery left them, but wiggling and energetic like a puppy. “Do you still want to move with me to L.A.?”

Realization dawns on Eddie slow and sweet, brightening his eyes and soothing away the early hour’s irritation. He slides his hands over the tops of Richie’s thighs, squeezing once to ground them both. “I do.”

“Bad choice of words there, Eds, given our contextual baggage.”

“Oh, fuck off.” Eddie tips Richie over, rolling so they’re both on their sides. He scoots forward to brush the tips of their noses, legs tangling between them like some unsolvable knot. “I love you, Richie. I want to be with you. And the thought of leaving some things behind isn’t so bad, either.”

A smile splits Richie’s mouth, so bright and blinding it puts the sun through the curtains to shame. “For real?”

“How many times are you gonna ask?” Eddie laughs, draping an arm over Richie’s side to pull him in impossibly closer. “Yes. I want to see what kind of things my man gets up to out in the world. I want to see what _I_ get up to… I want to see the world in general.”

Richie cups Eddie’s cheek in his hand, his broad palm covering such an absurd expanse of his face. “Los Angeles is a shitty place to start.”

Eddie shrugs, looking cool as a cucumber as he mutters, “Maybe. But it’s a start.”

The humiliating prickle of tears plucks at Richie’s eyes again. He rolls over onto his stomach and pulls the blankets over his head, feeling ridiculous and emotionally raw. After feeling powerless and trapped for so long, it feels too good to be true that the life he’s building for himself is full of so many wonderful things.

“Hey,” Eddie crawls into the blanket cocoon after him, draping himself over Richie’s back. “No hiding.”

“Sorry,” his voice quivers on the precipice of sobs. “I’m being silly.”

Eddie hums against his shoulder, fondly petting through his hair. “You’re always silly.” He softens his voice as if he’s imparting some great secret, “Don’t tell anyone, but it’s one of the things I love about you.”

Richie snivels into the pillow, tears winning out. “Oh god, I’m sorry. You’re being so nice and I’m just blubbering like some snotty swamp thing.”

“A very handsome swamp thing,” Eddie laughs. He slides off of him to nestle snugly against his side. “Hey, at the risk of making you cry even harder, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

Eddie goes silent for a long moment, fingers tracing errant patterns across Richie’s back in the way that usually indicates he’s nervous. Richie lifts his head to face him and really listen. “I… Not now, obviously. Not necessarily soon, either. Just, you know… _Some day_. Eventually. Would marriage still be something you’d ever be interested in trying with me?”

A calm settles deep in Richie’s bones at the question — a pure, aching love that comes from knowing how much it took for Eddie to even ask after everything that’s happened. “Yes. Of course. Whenever you’re ready.” He nudges forward and nips a kiss to Eddie’s lips. “But _you_ have to be the one to propose this time around.”

A laugh booms out of Eddie’s chest, and his eyes crinkle with joy like his body doesn’t know how to keep it inside of him anymore. “Alright, Rich. I can do that. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

Richie’s feeling pretty self-satisfied. He’s got a contract for an edgy cable show, a smokin’ sex machine ready to move across the country with him, a big shower in this hotel, and at least two hours before any of the others wake up and come looking for them.

The path to happiness is something he could get used to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *****Warnings for: binge drinking, minor violence, blood, and vomit*****
> 
> And that’s a wrap! Thank you so, so much to everyone who stuck it through and read this, and even more to all the wonderful commenters who gave me invaluable words of support. I’m ridiculously emotional about this. As always, my tumblr inbox is open for prompts—for this ‘verse or an unrelated story! I’ll be around <3

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think in the comments, and kudos/bookmark if you're feelin' it. Please scream in my face about these dudes or leave prompts in my inbox over on tumblr at [BisexualGoblin](https://bisexualgoblin.tumblr.com).


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